
Class BX_EJB1. 

Book - H 3 ^ 

Coplghtli" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



Old Thoughts 

on Old Themes 

— by — 

Rev, Edward C, Hearn. 



CHICAGO: 

J. S. Hylakd & Company, 

1901. 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two CoPtiitt RtCEtVEO 

AUG. 22 1901 

COPVRIGMT ENTRY 

QCLASSO/XXc Nu. 

COPY a 



Copyright 1901 
Bt EDWARD C. HEARN. 



Dedication, 



To those who labor on, of the Class o/^88^ of Old 
St.foseph's Seminary, Troy, New York. 



IMPRIMATUR 



^John L. Sp aiding y 

Bishop of Peoria, 



PREFACE. 

The title of this book "Old Thoughts on Old 
Themes" suggests, somewhat, the nature of the 
matter the reader may expect to meet herein. 
The topics treated are some, only, of very many 
upon which the undersigned has spoken, after 
tlie manner of sermons, at different times and 
in different places during a ministry of twelve 
years. 

Some of these topics are as old as the world; 
and some are not very new. Little, therefore, 
is said that has not "oft been said before'' and 
so no claim is laid to originality. If any merit, 
however, attaches to the selection of ideas and 
the arrangement of them as they occur in these 
pages, the writer can say that such are all his 
own. On the other hand, should anyone take 
exception to the number of quotations found in 
some of these "Themes" he may know they are 
given in the belief that "in a multitude of words 
there is wisdom." And the writer finds comfort 
and encouragement in the truthful words of 
Emerson: "We are as much informed of a 
writer's genius by what he selects as by what 
he originates. We read the quotation with his 
eyes, and find a new and fervent sense." With 
a certain class, of course, it is hardly to be ex- 
pected that these "Themes" can find much favor. 
The novel and the progressive are such supreme 
and all-absorbent factors of their lives that they 



vi Preface 

fail to realize, apparently, that despite the ac- 
knowledged advances of science, the "boast of 
heraldry," and the "pomp of power," it yet re- 
mains debatable whether the world, on moral 
lines, is keeping* abreast of its ideals. It is a 
humiliating certainty to all who "run and read" 
that the efforts of modern civilization are thus 
far, seemingly, but "barriers to be burned away'* 
before the onward and steady march of evil. 
That there stalks abroad a widespread disregard 
for all laws. Divine and human, needs no com- 
ment. Virtue is on the wane, vice is becoming 
popular, and pink-edged, genteel depravity is 
hardly less common and less odious than dark- 
visaged, flagrant criminality. Why all this? 
Not the least because the race is losing sight of 
the "Old Themes" — topics that ever have been, 
that are, and forever must be of vital import to 
every soul that lives. 

In point of fact what find we better and more 
honorable than age in everything? Thus, while 
we admire the new we venerate and cling to the 
old. Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! 
Old friends to trust! Old authors to read! "I 
love everything that's old," says Oliver Gold- 
smith, "old friends, old times, old manners, old 
books." 

In the hope that these "Old Thoughts on Old 
Themes" may incite those who peruse them to 
better and nobler living, the writer sends them 
adrift. 

May 1st, ipoi. EDWARD C. HEARN. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Time. ... - - g 



11. 

III. 


lime. 

Eternity. 


21 

47 


IV. 


The Old, Old Story,— Death. 


69 


V. 


The Old, Old Story,— Death. 


85 


VI. 


The Tongue. . - - . 


103 


VII. 


The Catholic Church and Her 






Children. ... 


129 


VIII. 


"Not all of me shall die." 


151 


IX. 


"Not all of me shall die." - 


161 


X. 


The Cross. - . - - 


177 


XI. 


Perseverance. .... 


197 


XII. 


Heaven. 


213 



Time, 



*^Son, observe the time,^'^ — Eccles, IV : 23. 

*Y must work the works of him that sent me^ 
whilst it is day; the night cometh^ when no man 
can work,^^ — St. John IX : 4. 

No preacher is listened to but time; which gives 
us the same train and turn of thought that elder 
people have tried in vain to put into our heads, — 
Jonathan Swift, 



I. 



It is related of the great Emperor Charles the 
Fifth, of Spain, who once owned so many lands, 
both in Europe and America, that the sun never 
set on his dominions, that he had in the royal 
palace a very valuable chest in which were care- 
fully stored away his numerous treasures. 

Among the many rare and radiant jewels 
stored away in this chest was a most costly and 
artistically wrought finger ring on which was in- 
scribed in delicate characters the following sig- 
nificant words: "This is the most precious jewel 
in the world." 

Brethren, such a jewel you and I possess. 
What, you ask me, may this jewel be? It is 
Time. 

There are three considerations, that have a 
most important bearing on the subject before us, 
which always fill me with sentiments of wonder- 
ment and dread when I duly reflect upon 
them, and which, doubtless, have not infrequent- 
ly fallen under your own observation. 

11 



12 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

These are, first, the awful rapidity of the flight 
of time; secondly, its absolute irrevocability 
when gone; and thirdly, the seemingly trifling 
value that men place upon it. 

Have we not all marked the more than flash- 
like speed of time? Do we not often, as we 
glance at our time-piece, marvel to find the min- 
ute or the hour-hand way ahead on the dial? 
Now, as the balmy days of summer are gradu- 
ally deepening into the cooler ones of autumn, 
do we not often remark: '*How short the days 
are getting! How fast the joyous, gladsome 
summer is speeding away from us!" Time 
travels like a ship in the wide ocean that hath 
no bounding shore to mark its progress. "Like 
the inundation of some mighty stream is its 
course. 

We look for the homes and friends of our 
childhood, they are gone. The loves and ani- 
mosities of our youth, .where are they? Swept 
away like the camps that had been pitched in 
the sandy bed of the river. Yes, the mom.ents 
of our existence escape us almost before they 
seemed shaped into being; as the lightning's 
flash they at once exist and expire. And yet 
we do not think of this ; we hardly seem to notice 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 13 

it. We are like travelers descending a rapid 
river, who, deceived by their senses, persuade 
themselves that the banks are moving from 
them and that they are stationary. What do the 
years that we have thus far lived appear to us? 
Those that lie ahead of us, and God alone knows 
if, indeed, there be yet years in store for us, may 
appear long; but, looking back upon them from 
the shady side of sixty, seventy or even eighty, 
they seem only like a tale that is told, as the 
dream of a night, or like a bark that goes down 
a stream, leaving only a furrow on the waters 
that soon disappears. The past is gone forever; 
to the uncertain future we can surely lay no 
claim; the present alone is at our disposal; nay, 
so fleet and quick in ending does even the short- 
lived present appear that scarce have wx come 
into possession of it when it, too, is forever 
buried with the past. I draw a breath, heave a 
sigh, utter a word, and that breath, that sigh, 
that word are so much taken away from my life ; 
that much of my earthly existence is gone for- 
ever. You entered this sacred edifice a brief 
while ago, the moments of my poor discourse 
are present to you now, very shortly you will 
depart for your peaceful homes, and lo! the 



14 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

whole period is yours no more. "My days have 
been swifter than a post/' said holy Job, and the 
devout king, Ezechias, meditating on the short- 
ness of time, cried aloud: "My life is cut off 
as by a weaver; while I was yet but beginning, 
he cut me off." Isaias xxxviii:13. 

"Oh, the inimitable, silent, never-resting thing 
called time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, 
like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we 
and all the universe swim like exhalations, like 
apparitions which are and then are not. This 
surely is a mystery, a very miracle, — a thing to 
strike us dumb, for we have no v/ord to speak 
about it." — Carlyle, 

The second thought that arrests our attention 
on the subject of time, and which should deeply 
and lastingly impress us, is that when once it is 
gone it can never again be recalled. Not all the 
gems that the dark, untrodden caves of ocean 
bear, not all the gilded wealth of the universe 
could buy it, nor all the briny tears that were 
ever shed could purchase again the faintest por- 
tion of it when once it is gone. It is with time 
pretty much as it is with innocence. Innocence 
is a flower that withers when touched, and 
blooms not again though watered with tears. 



'^Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 15 

Time is a jewel of so priceless a value that once 
lost it can never be recovered — it is lost forever. 
You remember the lines: *Xost, yesterday, 
somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two 
golden hours, each set with sixty diamond min- 
utes. No reward is offered, for they are gone 
forever." — Horace Mann. A torn garment may 
be mended. A burned edifice can be rebuilt. A 
routed army gathered together and brought 
again into a state of discipline. Losses of all 
kinds, whencesoever they come, can in some 
way or other be made good. But time once 
gone, is gone beyond recall. In a certain sense 
time is as valuable as eternity itself, since by the 
good or evil employment of even one single mo- 
ment God and heaven may be gained or lost to 
us forever. A diamond would appear irredeem- 
ably precious if with it we could purchase a 
kingdom. Every moment of time is such a dia- 
mond, since there is not a single one of them 
in which we may not merit for ourselves a share 
in the eternal and unheard of joys of heaven. 
Bear in mind that time is only a loan, for the 
proper use of which we shall one day be obliged 
to render a most exacting account to a judge 



16 "Old Tko7ights on Old Themes" 

who receives no bribes, takes no excuses, but 
who will judge that which is just. 

Knowing these things, does it not seem as 
though we ought to treasure every moment of 
our existence with more than miser care? And 
yet, is there any one thing that we apparently 
reckon of so little account? You will see men 
loitering for hours around the corners of our 
streets, gazing listlessly at the passers-by, or 
lolling about for whole days at a time amid the 
tobacco-fumed and alcohol-scented atmosphere 
of a bar room; ask them what they are doing, 
and their answer will be — "We are only passing 
the time/' You will find women, lost to every 
appearance of that cleanliness and tidiness that 
so well and fittingly becomes their sex, giving 
much of the day, and, perhaps, part of the night, 
to such a free and unbridled expression of their 
sentiments and thoughts that one would suppose 
they were officially constituted to pass criticism 
on every human being that lies both within and 
without the circle of their acquaintance. Glance 
at the homes of these and perhaps you would 
blush at the disclosure: pictures and ornaments 
disfigured for the want of a careful hand, furni- 
ture that a little attention would beautify, and 



*'Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 17 

floors that have not known the touch of a broom 
for many a long day. Question these, even, and 
perhaps they too will have the audacity to fall 
back upon a lack of time as an apology for ap- 
pearances. Strange, we all sorely complain of 
the shortness of time, and yet have much more 
than we know what to do with. "Our lives are 
either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing 
nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that 
we ought to do. We are always complaining 
that our days are few, and acting as though 
there would be no end of them. There is noth- 
ing that we can properly call our own but our 
time; yet everybody fools us out of it who has a 
mind to do it. If a man borrow a paltry sum 
of money there must needs be bonds and securi- 
ties; but he who has my time thinks he owes 
me nothing for it, though it be a debt that grati- 
tude itself can never repay." — Seneca, 

There is one standpoint, at least, from which 
we shall all, eventually, realize to its fullest ex- 
tent the true worth of time — it is the death-bed. 
Upwards of eighty thousand souls go forth every 
day to meet their eternal doom, and I hesitate 
not to aver that nine out of every ten of even 
the purest and saintliest lived lives of those same 



18 'Vld Thoughts on Old Thanes" 

would give worlds upon worlds could they at 
that awful moment stay time's course to slower 
speeding. How often have you not heard men, 
when stretched on a bed of sickness, palsied in 
limb and physical wrecks of their own folly and 
dissipation, give vent to their regrets for a mis- 
spent life in these or similar expressions: "Oh, 
if I could only live my life over again how good 
a man I would be! How much vv^ould I not do 
to repair the evils of the days and the hours that 
are now gone from me forever! If I am only 
spared to go forth again to my daily duties how 
different a course will I pursue!" 

Think you that the evening of your life will 
surround you with any kindred regrets? With 
what kind of a cargo are you freighting the 
hours and the days that are fast hurrying you 
on, ever on, way out across the sea of time to- 
wards the limitless shore of eternity? Oh, may 
we all while we are aboard the ship of time, 
which never anchors, rather do those things that 
may profit us at our landing than practice such 
as may cause our commitment when we come 
ashore! 

"Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of 
ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 19 

salutary counsellor of the wise, bringing all they 
dread to the one, and all they desire to the other. 
It warns us with a voice that even the sagest dis- 
credit too long, and the silliest believe too late. 
Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and 
repentance behind it; he that has made it his 
friend will have little to fear from his enemies; 
but he that has made it his enemy will have little 
to hope from his friends/' — Cotton. 

I might say much more to you on this all- 
important subject, and tell you how and when 
we lose our time, and what we should do for a 
proper disposition of the same. This, however, 
we will reserve, God willing, for a future occa- 
sion. 

For the present I shall leave you to the reflec- 
tions which the subject thus far developed may 
have suggested, and I shall ask you, in con- 
clusion, to carry with you to your homes to-night 
the truthful sentiments that underlie the follow- 
ing beautiful lines of the accomplished convert 
authoress, Adelaide A. Procter: 

"One by one the sands are flowing, 
One by one the moments fall; 
Some are coming, some are going; 
Do not strive to grasp them all. 



20 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

One by one thy duties wait thee, 
Let thy whole strength go to each. 
Let no future dreams elate thee, 
Learn thou first what these can teach. 



Hours are golden links, God's token, 
Reaching heaven; but one by one 
Take them, lest the chain be broken 
Ere the pilgrimage be done." 



Time. 



^^For behold short years pass away, and I am 
walking in a path by which I shall not return ^-^ 
Job XVI: 23. 

''Why stand you here all the day idle?'^^ — St. 
Matt XX: 6, 

" Who, looking backward from his manhood' s prime ^ 
Sees not the spectre of his misspent time f " 

— Whittier. 



II. 

At the beginning of a new year it is not only 
wise and well, but it is even necessary, for every 
one that has the welfare of his own soul at heart 
to look carefully over the year that has passed, 
and by the experiences, bitter or sweet, that it has 
left behind, learn to use to better advantage the 
time that is yet at his disposal. 

It may seem strange, but it is true, that as we 
grow older the years seem like mere bubbles on 
the strand, though they contain the same number 
of days and hours as when we were young. We 
compare every year with the sum total of those 
we have already lived, so that at twenty, it is but 
the twentieth part of our existence; but at fifty 
it is the fiftieth, and, seemingly, ever so much 
shorter. 

'The more we live more brief appear 
Our life's succeeding stages; 
A day to childhood seems a year, 
And years like passing ages. 

4: « * * « « 

23 



24 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
Indemnifying fleetness; 
And those of youth a seeming length. 
Proportioned to their sweetness." 

— Thomas Campbell. 

Few, indeed, fully realize the value of time, or 
appreciate the blessings they enjoy, until they are 
gone. There are thousands upon thousands of 
old men and women in the w^orld to-day who 
would give all they own could they be given back 
the opportunity of changing the by-gone deeds 
which they once committed, when they were 
young. And there are thousands and thousands 
of young men and young women, too, who are 
victims of the same illusions. But regrets never 
yet split open a coffin lid, and when the past is 
once gone, it is gone forever and forever and 
forever. 

Now, we all know what our past has been, but 
we none of us know w^hat our future is to be. 
But of this we may be certain: if we only do 
what God wants us to do we shall be something 
grand, something noble, and something with an 
immortal hereafter of joy, benediction, and 
praise. If then there is anything that will ensure 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 25 

this for us, it is undoubtedly the good and right 
employment of our time. 

It is easier, far, to discourse prettily about the 
shortness and fleetness of time than to give spe- 
cific rules how to employ it as it flies; and it is 
even easier still to do this than to confer the dis- 
position and create the determination to employ 
it to the best possible advantage. A miser will 
frequently become wealthy, not because he has a 
great income, but because he saves with the ut- 
most care and spends with the greatest caution. 
This is a precept taught us in the very morning 
of life, but which is, generally, not learned till 
late in the evening. 

It is a prodigious thing to consider that of all 
the talents entrusted to our keeping, time, upon 
several accounts, is the most precious; yet there 
is hardly any of which the generality of men are 
more profuse and regardless; nay, it is obvious 
that even those persons who are frugal and 
thrifty in everything else are yet extremely 
prodigal of their best revenue, time. Remember 
that at the very closest calculation we have but 
a short period in which to learn all and do all that 
we accomplish in life. Those who spend years 
in hard and toilsome study, and acquire a repu- 



26 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

tation for learning, must in the end confess that 
the little they do know, compared with the much 
they could know and m.ight know, is nothing. 
And, doubtless, the experience of many another 
will be our experience also, namely, that just as 
we are beginning to learn how to live we shall be 
called upon to die. 

Melancholy in the extreme is it to reflect that, 
when we have deducted all the time that is lost 
in sleep ; all that is inevitably appropriated to the 
demands of nature, or irresistibly engrossed by 
the tyranny of custom ; all that passes in regulat- 
ing the superficial decorations of life, or em- 
ployed in the reciprocations of civility; all that is 
torn from us by the ravages of foul disease, or 
stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude and lan- 
guor; when, I say, we deduct all this, how very, 
very small will be the portion of our existence 
of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or 
which we can entirely spend at our own choice 
and pleasure. 

The day which is best employed is not the 
one which has been the most profitable for our 
temporal affairs, or which has afforded us the 
greatest amount of frolic and fun, but that which 
has added most to our merits and with which 



*Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 27 

God has been well pleased. To so regulate our 
time that God and our salvation will be our con- 
stant object, and to be intimately persuaded that 
all the time which is not employed for Him is 
lost — forever lost — is to act wisely and well. 
How great is the misery and distress of a traveler 
who, when the night has come, perceives that he 
has missed the way and that no time remains for 
him to correct the mistake. Such, at death, will 
be the anguish of the Christian who has lived 
many years in the world and who has not spent 
them for God. 

But let us try to be a little more practical. We 
lose time, mainly, in three ways : First, by doing 
nothing at all; secondly, by doing evil; and 
thirdly, by omitting the good we ought to do, or 
by doing it with improper motives and in the 
wrong way. 

It is a law of God that in the sweat of his brow 
man shall eat his bread. "Cursed," said the 
Creator to our first parent, Adam, "is the earth 
in thy work: with labor and toil shalt thou eat 
thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and 
thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou 
shalt eat the herbs of earth. In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the 



28 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes*' 

earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust 
thou art, and into dust shalt thou return." — 
Gen. iii:17-19. Why those crowds rushing forth 
from their homes daily, at the sound of the fac- 
tory bell or the foundry whistle, if not in just ful- 
fillment of the decree issued against the sons of 
men by the transgression of our primeval parent? 
*^The sun has risen," saith the psalmist, "there- 
fore doth man go forth to his labor till the even- 
ing Cometh." — Ps. cii:23. And holy Job de- 
clares that "as the bird is born to fly, so too is 
man born to labor." — ^v:7. 

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard," says the wise 
man; "consider her ways and learn wisdom." — 
Prov. vi:6. These and innumerable other pas- 
sages of Holy Writ abundantly testify that the 
lot of man upon earth is a lot of toil and labor. 
Now, the idler both lives and acts in direct op- 
position to this world-wide law. Aversion for 
labor either supposes that we are not able to con- 
ceive anything grand, or that we lack the energy 
to strive for its realization. The idle man is an 
object of universal contempt. He is looked upon 
as a man without a future — a cipher in the world. 
He is, as the poet says: 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 29 

"A clock that wants both hands, 
As useless if it goes as if it stands." — Cozvper, 

Degrading as this vice is in itself, it is equally 
so to him who gives himself up to it. "Idleness 
hath taught much evil" (Eccles. xxxiii:29), says 
the Scripture; and, according to the adage, "it is 
the mother of mischief;" but a wise occupation is 
the shield of the heart. 

It costs the devil but very little effort to draw 
into the most shameful excesses the man whose 
heart is enervated by indolence, and whose soul 
is open to all evil impressions. The brook is 
pure as long as it runs rapidly over the brow of 
the hill; when it has reached the plains and re- 
mains stagnant its limpid water becomes livid 
and miry. What will you see if you disturb the 
surface? Reptiles whose number is legion. Such 
is the heart of the man v^ho slumbers in in- 
dolence. 

And here it may not be amiss to make a re- 
mark on what is called procrastination, that is, a 
disposition to delay, to put ofif doing till another 
time what we ought to do at the present. If you 
determine to rise at such an hour, be on the floor 
at the moment. If you resolve to do so much 
before your breakfast, be sure to do it. It Is 



30 ''Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

impossible to have the mind free and unembar- 
rassed if you suffer your daily duties to be always 
driving you. The woman who defers her house- 
hold affairs until the very last moment in which 
she can put them in order is not her own mis- 
tress. A man may do a full day's work in the 
afternoon; but if he puts it off till that time he 
will be very unhappy all the morning, will over- 
exert himself in the afternoon, and, consequently, 
w^ill be ill in the evening. He who does anything 
in haste, no mxatter what his powers of mind may 
be, cannot do it well. If you have fifty miles to 
ride to-morrow, you may possibly be able to ac- 
complish the entire journey after dinner; but it 
would certainly be very unwise to undertake it, 
and cruel both to yourself and horse. There 
should be no loitering in the morning because 
you can retrieve the loss in the evening. Punc- 
tuality in attending to one's affairs, let me tell 
you, is of the very highest importance. It is 
like packing things in a box; a skillful packer 
will get in half as much more as an unskillful one, 
will he not? 

One great advantage of punctuality is the 
calmness of mind which it produces. Disorderly 
persons, as you must have noticed, are always in 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 31 

a hurry. They have no time to speak with you, 
for they are always going somewhere else; and 
when they arrive there they find it is too late for 
their business, or they must hasten away again 
before they can finish it. That was a wise maxim 
of the old Romans, "Age quod agis." Do what 
you are doing. Punctuality, moreover, gives 
weight to character. Such a man has made an 
appointment with me, then I know he will keep 
it; and his promptness generates punctuality in 
me; for, like other virtues, it propagates itself. 
Appointments, indeed, become debts. I owe you 
punctuality if I have made an appointment with 
you, and I have no right to throw away your 
time, if I do my own. 

In fine, the one who succeeds is the one who 
is prompt. The procrastinator never accom- 
plishes anything of moment. He is always going 
to do this, or that, and yet he never does it ex- 
cept by accident. Then he wonders at his ill- 
success, and why other people get along better 
than he does. If he would sit down and calmly 
reason out the matter, he would soon discover 
the cause of his failure in life. If you ask him to 
do anything right of?, he says: "What's the 
hurry? There is time enough." So, while he is 



32 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

planning to do something others get in ahead of 
him. In prospective he is going to be rich, or he 
is going to be famous. Yet the years move on 
and he is neither. It may be true, as the poet 
Burns says, that "the best laid plans of men oft 
come to naught," but those of the dilatory per- 
son are never realized, because his dreams never 
mature into action. Duty, then, always before 
pleasure. Strive at all times and in all things 
to be punctual. Remember that "delays are 
dangerous." Bear in mind the old maxim, "By 
the streets of by and by, one arrives at the house 
of Never." "Procrastination is the thief of 
time." Who has not heard of David and Solo- 
mon? David the man after God's own heart, and 
Solomon the wisest of men. They were both vir- 
tuous; they were saints, even, as long as they 
kept themselves occupied. What drew them into 
sin? Idleness. Let us learn from their example 
what may befall us if we expose ourselves to the 
same dangers. 

We are not more holy than David, nor wiser 
than Solomon; and how can anyone, and es- 
pecially the young, with lively imagination and 
ardent temperament, in the midst of a corrupt 
world, brave with impunity the enemy that con- 



''Old Thoughts oh Old Themes'' 33 

quered them? The folly of those who allow the 
golden days of youth to pass in idle pleasure, 
who squander the precious hours which should 
be devoted to acquiring a store of useful knowl- 
edge, passes comprehension and cannot be too 
severely condemned. They tell us that Glad- 
stone, the late eminent English statesman, never 
lost a moment of time; but, even in the short 
intervals between official callers, he was always 
glancing over some new book; and Cardinal 
Wiseman's beautiful story of '^Fabiola'' is the 
production of stray moments snatched from a 
busy life. "Be never wholly unoccupied, but al- 
ways either reading, writing, praying or medi- 
tating," is the golden advice of the devout 
Thomas a Kempis ; and St. Jerome counsels us to 
**work as if we were always to live, and to live 
as if we were to die at any moment." 

We lose time, secondly, in doing evil, as those 
do who spend their time in reading questionable 
novels, or other books, in which religion or 
morals are but little respected; in backbiting or 
criticising our neighbor and speaking ill of him; 
in frequenting dangerous society or going to 
certain soirees or night gatherings where seduc- 
tion enters into the soul through all the senses; 



34 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

in meditating projects of revenge, hatred or in- 
justice, and in a thousand other ways forbidden 
by the laws of God and His Church. 

There is an old Spanish proverb which runs 
this way: "To return good for good is human; 
to return good for evil is divine; but to return 
evil for good is satanic.'^ 

Milton, in his sublime epic poem "Paradise 
Lost," puts into the mouth of one of the arch- 
fiends of hell these strong, strange words : 

"To be weak is to be miserable, 
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure, 
To do aught good never will be our task. 
But ever to do ill our sole delight, 
As being the contrary to His high will, 
Whom we resist." — Bk. I. 

If, then, to spend our time in doing nothing at 
all is sinful and wrong, how satanlike must it 
not be to spend one's time in doing evil and per- 
verting others. 

You remember that little incident in the life 
of our blessed Lord, when he drew nigh to the 
barren fig tree (Matt, xxii); seeing it destitute 
of fruit, although it was not then the season of 
fruit, He poured out His malediction upon it, 
saying, "May no fruit grow on thee henceforth 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'* 35 

forever;" and immediately it withered away. He 
seeks for fruit on the branches of this tree and 
He finds nothing but leaves — useless ornaments, 
which do not save it from that terrible anathema. 
Men may be satisfied with the exterior works of 
virtue, but God, who searches the heart, who 
hungers after our love, sees nothing but fruitless 
leaves, with which He will not be satisfied. Folia 
tantum — only leaves. 

Now, if the Savior of the world cursed the bar- 
ren fig tree because it bore no fruit, how much 
more likely is the evil tree, which produces bad 
and unwholesome fruit, to meet with the same 
just punishment. 

The Sacred Text informs us that when the 
prophet Elias fled from the wicked Queen Jeze- 
bel his journeyings brought him, finally, to the 
holy mountain of God, called Horeb. While rest- 
ing in a cave of the mountain God spoke to him 
and said: "Elias, what are you doing here?" It 
would be well if we also, sometimes at least, 
would put the same question to ourselves. It 
would keep us away altogether from many places, 
and would hasten our leaving many more. 

What a happy change would be effected in the 
lives of many of that numerous and foolish class 



36 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

of humanity that spend hour after hour lolling 
and loafing around the saloon, inhaling its foul 
atmosphere, wending their unsteady way home 
in the small hours of the morning, and perhaps of 
Sunday morning, too, neglecting their families, 
ruining soul and body, if they, not sometimes 
only, but often, would ask themselves the ques- 
tion: "What am I doing here?" All of you 
w^hen you find yourselves the center, or the side 
line figure in a group, lending a willing ear to 
the silly gossip for which the small town is pro- 
verbial, would do well to recall the old adage, 
"the partaker is as bad as the thief," and to ask 
yourselves the question: "What am I doing 
here?" Say to yourselves: "this may not be 
true, or it may be exaggerated. People some- 
times tell falsehoods. They often make mis- 
takes, and they frequently hear wrong." Take all 
these things into consideration before you be- 
lieve. 

So many people in this age, and especially the 
young, have no aim in life; they simply drift on 
— go with the current. We have all, it is true, at 
cur birth been put out to sea to make life's voy- 
age. We have left one shore and some day we 
will land on another. Where? That depends on 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 37 

tHe direction we are taking, and by what mark 
we are steering our ship. Purpose and power 
determine destination, and the influences we 
utilize in our progress predict our character and 
our eternity. Yet, instead of being masters of 
influence and of the world, so many become a 
prey to every passing change, and allow them- 
selves to be molded by every contact. Going 
with the current of thought, being influenced by 
the moral atmosphere of our associates, swayed 
by the sentiments of society, and living under 
the tyranny of the present and the transient, will 
surely shipwreck the soul on a desolate coast. 

Time, remember, is life. God has given us our 
life, and preserves it to us in order that we may 
employ it in His service. When we sin we turn 
the gifts of God against Himself, and employ in 
outraging Him what we should have employed in 
serving Him. Alas! how many blacken the days 
of their life in this detestible ingratitude. Each 
moment of our existence, as it passes away, en- 
ters into the vast bosom of eternity and ceases to 
belong to time; but before it enters therein it 
presents itself to the great Master of all, and acts 
as a witness, either for or against us, according 
to the good or evil use we have made of it* 



38 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Those, then, who in their best years yield to sin 
and devote all their time and energy to worldly 
things, who seek to console themselves by say- 
ing that they will serve God hereafter when they 
are old, will find that the hereafter which was to 
be devoted to acquiring means sufficient for their 
honorable maintenance in old age, to laying up a 
store of useful knowledge, or to perfecting them- 
selves in piety and virtue in preparation for a 
happy death, will never be thus profitably em- 
ployed. As a man soweth, so also shall he reap, 
both in quantity and in kind. All men have their 
seed time and their harvest both in time and for 
eternity. Another seed time and another harvest 
may be granted to us; but it is another. That 
which is lost, is lost forever. 

We lose time, in the third place, by omitting 
the good we ought to do, or by doing it with 
improper motives, and in the wrong way. The 
Roman Emperor Titus having once allowed a 
day to pass without performing some good of- 
fice, expressed His regret in the following terms : 
"My friends, I have lost a day." 

"Count that day lost whose low, descending sun 
Views from thy hand no worthy action done." 

—Anon. 



''Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 39 

Hence we lose our time not only when we vio- 
late the commandments of God and of His 
Church, but also by allowing opportunities for 
doing good to go by unheeded. And, oh! how 
many a kind act is left undone, how many a 
gentle, encouraging word unspoken, how many 
noble deeds of charity unexercised, prayers ne- 
glected, Masses unheard, sacraments unfrequent- 
ed, that time affords ample opportunity for doing 
were we only disposed to take it. 

An evening is passed in chatting and smoking, 
singing, dancing, and playing cards; it seems a 
small space of time, but when life closes, and we 
leave time to go into eternity, how many of these 
fragments lie scattered and murdered by the way- 
side. 

Men and women neglect to pray, to frequent 
the sacraments, to assist at holy Mass, to dis- 
charge the duties of their state of life; and, they 
satisfy conscience that they have not time to ful- 
fill them all. But the wasted hours cry out 
against them. They should have been seized and 
stamped with what would have met the approba- 
tion of conscience and of God as they winged 
their way to His throne. Surely when death's 
dark hour arrives, and we are summoned to give 



40 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

a most exacting account of the thoughts, desires, 
words and actions of a lifetime, it is not the days 
and the nights that we have wasted in pleasures, 
but the times and the moments that we have de- 
voted to God and to the care of our immortal 
souls, that will afford us consolation and peace. 

Alas! how many there have been who have, 
during their entire lives, squandered this precious 
gift of time, and who then, when they came to 
lie on the bed of death, have reproached them- 
selves with a keenness of rebuke which language 
was too poor to convey. Queen Elizabeth of 
England, on her dying bed, cried aloud: "Mil- 
lions of money for one inch of time!'' But vain 
was the offer; the piercing cry came too late! 

Another, as he lay dying, said: "Oh, call back 
time again; if you can call back time again then 
there may be hope for me!" 

"O Time! that ever with resistless wing 
Cuts off our joys and shortens all our pain! 
Thou great destroyer that dost always bring 
Relief to man — all bow beneath thy reign. 
Nations before thee fall, and the grim king 
Of death and terror follows in thy train." — Anon, 

One of the greatest torments endured by the 
reprobate is his now unavailable regret in not 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 41 

having profited by the time that was granted him 
here below for doing good and saving his immor- 
tal soul. There is not a single one of those lost 
and unhappy beings that will not be eternally tor- 
tured by the galling reflection that he might to- 
day be a saint before the great white throne in 
heaven had he only led the life of the righteous. 
"Men," as a writer has plainly but truthfully put 
it, "may live fools, but fools they cannot die" 
(Young). And, believe me or not as you will, 
there are some living within the circuit of this 
little parish who ought to be good and edifying 
Catholics, and who, unless they turn from the 
error of their way, are laying up for themselves 
regrets as bitter as any that are to-day the lot 
of the reprobate. They see the symbol of salva- 
tion pointing heavenward from this beautiful 
church on the plain; they hear the voice of the 
Almighty calling them to assemble with His 
faithful ones around His holy altar; but, strange 
to say, Sundays come and Sundays go, week suc- 
ceeds week, and year follows year, yet finding 
them still the same; still draining pleasure's sin- 
ful bowl; still going on in their indifference and 
neglect, despising their Creator, disregarding the 
teachings of their Church, and perhaps even 



42 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

scoffing at religion and its ministers. Some day, 
however, the measure of their iniquities will be 
filled; God's mercies will be exhausted, and the 
threat that awaits the impenitent sinner will be 
fulfilled in their regard: ''You shall seek me and 
you shall not find me, you shall die in your sins." 
Yes, death will disclose to them the error of their 
wasted lives, and eternity will revenge the follies 
of time. 

One more reflection before I finish. I have 
said that we lose time in doing evil. More than 
this : whatever a man does, if he be not in a state 
of grace, and if he fail to do it out of love for 
God, it has no value for eternity. A life poisoned 
w^th sin may succeed in doing some things which 
the world calls ''good," but such good deeds will 
not be credited in the heavenly book of records 
and reckonings. You may lead a life of more 
than angelic purity from the cradle till your locks 
are silver, and fill up this life with a long list of 
hard and bitter penances, and then have the mis- 
fortune to stain your soul with one, and but one, 
single mortal sin, when lo! the whole bulk of 
your accumulated merits will weigh nothing in 
the scales of divine justice. A man, for example, 
knowingly, deliberately and without a reasonable 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thanes" 43 

preventing cause absents himself from Mass on 
Sunday, gets beastly intoxicated, or commits a 
grave sin of injustice; all the merits he may have 
previously acquired are lost, and he becomes, 
while in that miserable state, incapable of doing 
anything worthy of life eternal. This is rather a 
disheartening consideration, but one, neverthe- 
less, in perfect consonance with the teachings of 
Catholic theology. 

That the subject upon which I have spoken to 
you to-day may enable you to spend this new 
year well, or, at all events, that portion of it which 
the Almighty may be pleased to grant you, I 
would counsel you to bear in mind, and weave 
into your daily lives the following considerations : 
first, always to regulate your time. We find 
time for everything when we live according to 
rule and order. Those who do not live thus, 
go out of the way, follow the vagueness of their 
thoughts, obey the dictates of caprice and incon- 
stancy, uncertain as to what they will or will not 
do, and consequently, when their life work is 
ended it discloses many, many hours and days 
for the employment of which they can find no 
justification. But in a well regulated life there 
is no vacuum; everything has been foreseen; 



44 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

everything follows in order, and every action is 
more meritorious because performed through 
obedience, and because of the victories which we 
gain over ourselves. "Dost thou love life?" says 
Benjamin Franklin; **then waste not time, for 
time is the stuff that life is made of." 

Secondly, we should endeavor to have at all 
times and in everything a pure and perfect inten- 
tion. God sees the preparation of the heart. An 
ardent desire to please Him, and an ever watch- 
ful and continued attention to do and suffer 
through this motive, is so excellent a means to 
redeem time that it will enable us, in some meas- 
ure at least, to compensate for the days and the 
years that are gone. 

Finally, to remember the days of old, which we 
have lost; the eternal years upon which we shall 
soon enter; to meditate often upon the rapidity 
with which time escapes us, and of the slight 
portion, after all, that we can really call our ov/n. 
The past has gone forever; to the uncertain fu- 
ture we can surely lay no claim; the present, 
alone, is at our disposal. Nay, so short-lived and 
fleet in ending does even this appear that, ac- 
cording to St. Augustine, it has more of nonen- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thmes*' 45 

tity than being, for its nature is to pass and to 
cease to be. 

"Oh never, then, chide the wing of time, 
Or say 'tis tardy in its flight; 
You'll find the days speed quick enough 
If you but husband them aright. 

*Time is, indeed, a precious boon. 
But with the boon a task is given; 
The heart must learn its duty well 
To man on earth and God in Heaven." 

—Miss Cook, 

And as a last and comforting word I would re- 
mind you of what, surely, you all know your- 
selves, that 

"Though old time will some day end life's story, 
No time, if we end well, will end our glory.'' 



Eternity. 



"/ thought upon the days of oldy and I had in 
my mind the eternal years^ — Ps, LXXVI : 6. 

** While we look not at the things that are seen, 
but at the things that are not seen. For the things 
that are seen are temporal; but the things that are 
not seen are eternal,'*^ — II Cor, IV: i8. 

" Tell me, Louisa, how many years could /, who 
am now so old, expect to livef* ^^You mighty'^ 
replied Louisa, ^Hive for twenty years more. '^^ *^0 
foolish woman, do you want me, for twenty years 
of life on this earth, to forfeit an eternity of happi- 
ness, and condemn myself to an eternity of tor- 
mentsf^ {Reply of Sir Thomas More, Lord 
High Chancellor of England under Henry the 
Eighth, to his wife.) 



III. 

The subject that underlies this text is one 
about which, I must confess, my knowledge is 
very, very limited; and so meagre and vague is 
the information that learning and talent have 
thrown upon it, that feeble, at best, must be my 
attempt to enlighten you. 

O eternity, eternity! how little we know of a 
state to which we are destined, and how does the 
obscurity that hangs over that undiscovered 
country increase the anxiety we feel as we are 
journeying toward it! "Our imagination so 
magnifies this present existence, by the power of 
continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eter- 
nity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce 
an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere 
nothing to eternity; and this habit is so inveter- 
ately rooted in us that all the force of reason can- 
not induce us to lay it aside." — Pascal. 

"Most persons in thinking of time relatively to 
eternity, represent to themselves a long, long 
ago, blind past, and then an interminable but 

49 



50 ''Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

partially appreciable future, and time lying as a 
sort of sliced-out period between the two, which 
slice is attached to the eternity behind and the 
eternity before, and about which we have the 
comfort and satisfaction of being able to write 
history and chronicle events. We treat it as we 
would a mountain of gold, which we coin into 
money, and we conveniently cut it up into ages, 
years, months, days and hours. It is our nature 
to do so, and we cannot do otherwise. It is the 
condition of our being. But, as it will not be 
always thus, there are few things we are more 
constantly exhorted to do than to raise our im- 
agination, or rather our faith, as much as pos- 
sible out of these conventional and arbitrary 
trammels, and dispose ourselves for that better 
and fuller life to come which is our ultimate end, 
and where there are no years and no days."* 

Of three things, it is safe to say, we have ab- 
solute certitude, namely, that we now exist; that 
we were not always; and that we shall never 
cease to be. 

A hundred years ago and not one of us here 
present to-day had any existence at all. If you 



* Adapted from "The Eternal Years." By Hon. Mrs. A. Mont- 
gomery. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 51 

searched the tops of the highest mountains or 
scoured the depths of the deepest sea, you could 
not find us. We were nothing and nowhere. God 
in His infinite goodness and mercy drew us forth 
from that abyss of nothingness in which we were 
immersed and gave us being and Hfe. And a 
hundred years to come? 

"Who'll press for gold the crowded street 

A hundred years to come? 
Who'll tread this church with willing feet 

A hundred years to come? 
The rich, the poor, on land and sea, 
Where will the mighty millions be 

A hundred years to come? 
We all within our graves shall be 

A hundred years to come. 
No living soul for us will weep 

A hundred years to come. 
And other men our lands will till, 
And other men our streets will fill, 

A hundred years to come." — Anon. 

But a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand 
times a hundred times a thousand years, and 
think you we shall then cease to be? Ah no! 
For, whereas it is certain that we once were 
nothing, and that we now exist and live, certain 
too it is that we shall never again be nothing. 



52 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 

And where shall we then be? We shall be in 
eternity. 

"Man shall go into the house of his eternity/' 
Before the countless worlds that stud the canopy 
of heaven, or even the very dust from which we 
borrowed our existence was created, God the 
Almighty existed in the unparalleled brightness 
of His inconceivable light; and when years will 
have swelled into ages, when ages will have 
passed into myriads and myriads of ages, when 
the mind of man will have exhausted itself in en- 
deavoring to measure the length of eternity by 
its own ideas of time, yea, when time itself 
shall have ceased, and worlds will have passed 
away. He will still exist in the undiminished 
splendor of His inconceivable duration, for 
"Thou, O Lord, art the selfsame and thy years 
shall not change." "Truly, truly, I say to you, 
before Abraham was made I am." St. Jno. 
viii:48. And not only so, but we believe, on the 
authority of truth divine, transmitted to us 
through the infallible teaching of Holy Church, 
that after this present life, where everything is 
evanescent and fleeting, w^e too shall enter eter- 
nity, where nothing passes away. "All great na- 
tures delight in stability; all great men find eter- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 53 

iiity affirmed in the very promise of their facul- 
ties." — Emerson, 

"There is," says Cicero, "I know not how, in 
the minds of men a certain presage, as it were of 
a future existence, and this takes the deepest 
root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest 
geniuses and most exalted souls." Nature, too, 
seems silently to repeat that man is immortal. 
At evening, when the heavens appear to recline 
so softly on the earth, does not imagination pic- 
ture beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, a 
native land of undying love? 

Reason demonstrates the immortality of the 
soul; the most evident revelation teaches us the 
resurrection of the body and the eternity of the 
great hereafter. "Thou, O Lord, in the begin- 
Tiing, didst lay the foundations of the earth, and 
the heavens are the works of thy hands. They 
shall all grow old as a garment, and as a vesture 
shalt Thou change them and they shall be 
changed; but Thou, O God, and we, by a decree 
of Thy sovereign will, shall remain, and our 
years shall not fail."— Ps. ci:26-29. Thou hast 
ordained that eternity should be attached to our 
being, as it is to Thine! Thou and we shall sub- 
sist forever! 



54 *'Qld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Where are all those who once made the world 
resound with the story of their greatness? 
Where are the mighty ones of ages long gone by, 
the patriarchs and prophets of the olden time, 
the heroes and sages of Greece and Rome? They 
are in eternity. Where are all the countless be- 
ings that peopled the world in the days before 
the flood; the innumerable millions that lived and 
died in the darkness of error and infidelity; the 
inconceivable hosts that have perished on all the 
battle-fields, and in all the appalling disasters and 
heartrending catastrophies recorded on the pages 
of history? They are in eternity. Where are the 
associates of childhood," the friends of our riper 
years, the dear familiar forms of parents, brothers 
and sisters that remorseless death has taken from 
us ? They are in eternity. 

"O eternity, eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful 
thought !" — Addison, 

Who of that innumerable caravan that has 
crossed to thy echoless shores has ever yet re- 
turned to tell us what thou art? Language is 
powerless to express what the mind does not 
comprehend. For eternity, being one of the per- 
fections of God, must be as incomprehensible as 
God Himself. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 55 

"What is eternity?" was a question once asked 
at an educational institution in Paris; and the 
beautiful and striking answer given by one of 
the pupils was this: ''The lifetime of the Al- 
mighty.'^ "Ego sum qui sum" — ''I am who am/' 
was the definition given of Himself by the 
Creator to Moses of old. "Who shall measure 
thy days, O Holy One of Israel, for from eternity 
to eternity Thou art God." 

With regard to us eternity is duration without 
end. An unvarying condition, which nothing 
can measure and nothing alter. "It is/' says 
Saint Augustine, "a circle, the centre of which is 
ever, and whose circumference is never." Our 
age, proud of its discoveries, inventions and ap- 
pliances, has accomplished marvels by the power 
of calculation. It has measured the depths of the 
sea and the heights of the mountains. It has 
brought within its compass the dimensions and 
movements not alone of the planet which we in- 
habit, but likewise of the countless worlds that 
float in space; their position with regard to us, 
and their relative distances from one another. 

But who has ever yet been subtle enough to 
measure the length of eternity? What power of 
calculation can come near a boundary where no 



56 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

boundary exists? What sounding line can 
fathom a limitless abyss? What glance can look 
beyond a height whose end no eye can reach? 
What comparison, then, shall I employ adequate 
enough to convey to you even a faint idea of 
those unending days that await us after death? 
Shall I bid you behold the foamy, fathomless 
ocean, and measure the briny drops that com- 
pose its immensity, or number the wrinkled 
sands that pave its extended shores? Easier far 
would the computation be, than that of the revo- 
lution of the eternal years. Shall I call to my 
assistance the science of numbers, and bid the 
mathematician have recourse to his highest pow- 
ers of calculation? Even so; let him be exclu- 
sively employed in the operation and when he 
shall have completed a cycle of digits sufficient 
to gird the countless worlds that illumine the ce- 
rulean fields of space, he will find that he has only 
bartered away irrevocable time in a useless and 
hopeless task. There is in the northern hemi- 
sphere a brilliant star called Arcturus. Of the 
myriads and myriads of worlds in that section of 
the heavens it is said to be our nearest neighbor. 
And how near think you may that be? Only a 
little more than eleven million times as far away 



"Old Thoughts on Old The^nes" 67 

as the sun. That gorgeous sun, v/hich shines 
above us and around us, and which is so neces- 
sary for life and growth, is ninety millions of 
miles distant from the earth. Consequently, if 
the sun is ninety millions of miles away from the 
earth, and Arcturus is eleven million times as far 
away again from our beautiful orb of day, if you 
multiply ninety millions by eleven millions, you 
will have an idea of the immense and inconceiv- 
able distance we are from that wonderful star. 
Suppose now you have a ladder of gold, the foot 
of which rests on the earth, and the top on that 
far of? planet, Arcturus, and that you climb one 
round every year; how long, tell me, do you 
think it would take you before you would be able 
to accomplish your task, and reach the top of that 
golden ladder? The mind is lost in those billions 
and trillions of ages; and yet eternity is all this 
and infinitely more. Add, subtract, multiply or 
divide it by any conceivable mathematical quan- 
tity, and you neither augment nor diminish its 
duration. 

Though language be rich "in thoughts that 
breathe and words that burn,'' ever and never, 
always and forever, alone can express the dura- 
tion of an endless, unchangeable and irreparable 



58 'Vld TJwiigJifs on Old Themes'' 

hereafter. How long shall the ravishing joys of 
paradise inundate the souls of the blest? How 
long shall the dismal wails of the lost continue 
tc resound through the gloomy vaults of hell? 
Forever. 

When will eternity become a little less delight- 
ful to the friends of God, a little less hopeless to 
His enemies? Never. O Ever, O Never, O 
Eternity! Would that we could understand you 
as those do whom death has separated from us I 
Vicissitude is the lot of our present condition. 
Unchangeableness awaits us in the great here- 
after. Here day follows night, and night gives 
place to day, seasons pass and repass, and vari- 
ety is the spice of life; but in the long-continued 
round of the eternal years, all will be fixed and 
immutable. "In whatsoever place the tree shall 
fall, there shall it be." — Eccles. xi:3. When the 
tree is cut down it falls, does it not, to the side 
to which it is inclined? In what direction does 
the tree lean? Is it much inclined? Has it been 
so long? It matters little. In what place so- 
ever it shall fall, there it shall be. After the lin- 
gering lapse of as many millions of ages as there 
are drops of water in the deep and dark blue sea, 
leaves on the beautiful trees, or grains of sand 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 59 

on the great sea-shore, even then there shall it 
still be. 

So, then, there is an eternity, and, though I 
feel and believe that I have made but a feeble 
attempt to enlighten you on this profound mys- 
tery of faith, still, that the little I have said may 
carry conviction to your minds and dispose your 
hearts for nobler deeds, let us go back, before 
we finish, to a thought or two put forth in the 
beginning of my sermon. 

A hundred years ago and not one of us here 
present to-day had any existence at all. We were 
nothing and nowhere. The Omnipotent drew us 
forth from this abyss of nothingness in which we 
were immersed, and gave us being and life. Cer- 
tain as we are that we once were not, and that we 
now exist, certain, no less it is, that we shall 
never cease to be. God, we know, is ever the 
same. He never alters His decrees, nor changes 
the nature of His creations; and, though a 
*'breath might break us, as a breath hath made 
us," still we are born for eternity, and for all 
eternity we shall live. What follows? Three 
most important and never to be forgotten con- 
siderations : 

First, That eternity depends on our life. 



60 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

Secondly, On a very short life, and 
Thirdly, Perhaps on one moment of our life.* 
Of the sovereign Judge of the living and the 
dead it is written: "He will render to every one 
according to his works." — Matt. xvi:28. And of 
man, who shall be judged, it is said: "What 
things a man shall sow those also shall he reap." 
— Gal. vi:8. Cast thy bread upon the running 
waters, and in time it shall return to you again. 
"Our actions," says St. Bernard, "are so many 
seeds for eternity. We cast them down into the 
earth, they disappear, but we shall find them 
again at death, when they shall be inseparably 
united to us." 

The thought which crosses my mind, the word 
which escapes my lips, the action which lasts but 
a moment, are all flowing on into the vast bosom 
of eternity; they are carefully stored away in the 
memory of the Almighty, and have become as 
permanent and as immutable as eternity itself. 
"Where do our thoughts go?" asked the child; 
and the mother replied, "Into the memory of 
God." 



* These considerations, and some of the thoughts that occur 
in the development of them, are adapted from "Chaignon's Sac- 
erdotal Meditations." 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" Gl 

You remain away from Mass on Sunday with- 
out a reasonable preventing cause. You curse, 
blaspheme, or injure your neighbor in his person, 
property, or reputation, and these, unless expi- 
ated by Christian' penance, shall for eternity be 
attached to your soul, to torture it, as the vulture 
adheres to the prey which it devours. We are, 
therefore, the arbiters of our own unending here- 
after; and, if we judge of the future by the past, 
when we call to mind our failings, imprudences 
and falls, have we not reason to fear and tremble? 

Eternity depends on a very short life. Days 
which can be counted, and years which can be 
measured are nothing when compared with end- 
less duration. "Behold Thou hast made my days 
measurable; and my substance is as nothing be- 
fore thee." — Ps. xxxvii:6. What after all is our 
life? "A vapor, which appeareth but a little 
while and afterwards shall vanish away." — St. 
Jas. iv:15. A shade, whose footsteps are like 
those of a wind across the sea, which the calm of 
morn erases, and of which nothing remains save 
the traces on the wrinkled sand that paves it 
(Shelley); a tale as brief, and yet as full of won- 
drous change as any told of old to minstrel harp 
at midnight's silent hour. 



62 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

"Men flourish, like the morning flower 
In beauty's pride arrayed; 
But, long ere night, cut down, it lies 
All withered and decayed.'* — leobert Burns. 

Yes, fleet and quick in ending, is the longest 
life. And, who that has ever lived but must, 
perforce, at its close, confess with the aged pa- 
triarch, Jacob : "Few and evil have been the days 
of the years of my pilgrimage;'' with Ezechias, 
King of Juda: "My generation is at an end; and 
it is rolled away from me as a shepherd's tent" — 
Is. xxxviii:12; or with holy Job, "It has passed 
away like ships carrying fruit." — ix:26. Do not 
our days, in very truth, flow by like the waters 
of a rapid river, whose course nothing can stop? 
And like those waters do we not fall into the 
earth and return no more? Kings xiv:14r. 

"When we stand on the railroad, and look 
down the track for about a mile, it seems to us 
that the rails come nearer and nearer, till at last 
they meet. This appears so on account of the 
distance. But where they seem to touch they are 
just as far apart as where we are standing. So, 
also, looking back from eternity to the period of 
our mortal life, the day of our birth and the day 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 63 

of our death will seem to coincide, and our life 
here below will appear as nothing."* 

Finally, our eternity depends, perhaps, on one 
moment of our life. Grace has its times. Light 
shines and disappears. God comes near, and re- 
tires. He is master of His gifts and grants them 
on the conditions He wills. Perhaps your future 
hinges on the sermon you have listened to to- 
night, as, not unlikely, who can tell but that it 
might have been the turning point in the lives of 
some who, through their own wilful neglect, have 
remained away. 

Everlasting misery may be the consequence of 
an inspiration we reject, no less than unending 
bliss may be the reward of an act of obedience to 
the call of grace. Toward one of two eternities 
wc are continually advancing. Into either of 
two eternities we must necessarily enter. There 
is no alternative. We shall be forever with God, 
beholding His beauty and sharing in His happi- 
ness, or forever separated from Him by immense 
chaos, subject to the most horrible tortures and 
the most bitter regrets. We know, moveover, 
that there is only a step between us and the great 
hereafter. ''Stamus ad littus aeternitatis'' — "We 

* Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism. —Kinkead. 



64 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

are standing on the shore of eternity." A rush 
of blood to the head, a sudden attack of heart 
failure, the fatal termination of a neglected cold, 
a stroke of paralysis or apoplexy, and all will be 
fixed and unchangeable for evermore. 

If eternity were a doubtful matter, or only 
rested on a slender probability, even then we 
should make every effort in our power to lead a 
good life, lest, should the doctrine be true, we 
should thereby expose ourselves to the danger of 
being forever miserable ; but now it is not doubt- 
ful, but infallibly certain ; not a mere opinion, but 
a truth of faith. The thought of an unending 
hereafter cannot, therefore, but be most salutary 
to the Christian soul; for he that will put eternity 
and the world before him, and who will dare to 
look steadfastly at both of them, will find that 
the more often he contemplates them the former 
will grow greater and the latter less. "Who- 
ever," says St. Augustine, "meditates upon eter- 
nity without reforming his life must either have 
no faith or no heart. '^ The same distinguished 
saint calls the thought of eternity "the great 
thought;" and the venerable Father Avila con- 
verted a certain lady who lived at a distance from 
God by saying to her: "Madam, reflect on these 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 65 

two words — always and never." "I thought 
upon the days of old/' cries out the psalmist, 
"and I had in my mind the eternal years/' — Ps. 
lxxvi:6. If we seriously consider this thought, 
we too must necessarily adopt the maxim of St. 
Gregory, which was, likewise, the maxim of all 
God's servants: "Nulla major securitas, ubi per- 
iclitatur aeternitas." "No security is too great 
where eternity is at stake/' It v/as by following 
such a course, and feeling that they were created 
for eternity, that the saints found nothing with 
which they could compare themselves in this 
world, where everything passes away and is of 
short duration. Hence, we find a Saint Teresa, 
while yet a child, withdrawing to a solitary place 
and repeating over and over again to herself: 
"To be eternally happy, or eternally miserable/* 
The young St. Stanislaus Kostka when asked the 
motive of his apparently singular course of action 
gave answer: "I am not born for present things, 
but for eternal ones/' And the angelic youth 
Aloysius viewed whatever he did from this sole 
standpoint: "Quid hoc ad aeternitatem?'* 
"What will this avail me for eternity?" "Quid- 
quid non est aeternum, nihil est/' "Whatever is 
not eternal, is nothing/' The thought of eter- 



66 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

nity will do much for us, also, if we, not some- 
times only, but always, nourish our souls with it. 
Remember that the wheels of nature are not 
made to roll backward; everything presses on 
toward eternity; from the birth of time an im- 
petuous current has set in, which bears all the 
sons of men toward that interminable ocean. 
Meanwhile, heaven is attracting to itself what- 
ever is congenial to its nature — is enriching itself 
with the spoils of earth, and collecting within its 
capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent 
and divine, leaving nothing for the everlasting 
fire to consume but the objects and slaves of con- 
cupiscence. Go not hence then to-day without 
manning your souls with firm and generous re- 
solves to obey the voice that calls us to seek the 
things that are above, and no longer cleave to a 
world which must shortly perish, and which we 
must shortly quit, while we neglect to prepare 
for that in which we are invited to dwell forever. 
Let us follow in the track of those veritable 
heroes, the saints of God, who have taught us by 
their voice and encouraged us by their example; 
that, laying aside every weight, and the sin that 
most easily retards us, "we may push on to the 
prize of our supernal vocation," and run with 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 67 

patience the race that is set before us. While 
everything around us and within us reminds us 
of the approach of death, and concurs to teach 
us that this is not our rest, let us hasten our prep- 
arations for the grander possibilities of the world 
beyond the grave, and earnestly implore of the 
Almighty that grace which alone can put an end 
to that fatal war which our desires have too long 
waged with our destiny. When these move in 
the same direction, and that which the will of 
heaven renders unavoidable shall have become 
our choice, all things will be ours, life will be 
divested of its vanity, and death disarmed of its 
terrors. 



The Old, Old Story— Death. 



^^ Between myself and death there is only one 
step r— I Kings XX: 13, 

*^H is appointed unto men once to die,^^ — Heb, 
IX. 27. 

**lVe sometimes congratulate ourselves at the 
moment of waking from a troubled dream ^ — // may 
be so the moment after death.''^ — Hawthorne* 



IV. 

There are, I am quite confident, a very great 
many people in this world of ours, and there may 
be some among my hearers, sorry though should 
I be to know them, who are wont to relegate the 
thought of death to a distant corner of their 
memory, and to bring it forth from its hiding 
place only when some louder call awakens their 
attention and bids them pause and ponder on 
the brief and transitory tenure of their earthly 
existence. 

With others, however, I feel that it is not so. 
They realize fully, by experience, meditation and 
prayer, the teachings of an earlier faith — that 
man was created to know, love, and serve his 
Maker; that to fulfill the purpose of life and at- 
tain the great end of his existence he must pass 
through the portals of death, and that, conse- 
quently, preparation for this last great act in the 
drama of life cannot be other than wisdom, and 
wisdom of the highest type. 

In my remarks to you then to-day I feel that I 

71 



72 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

can tell you nothing new or strange. Possibly, 
however, I may be able to bring before you some 
forgotten facts; to revive within you a new line of 
thought on an old, old topic; and maybe by these 
means arouse some, at least, to a keener sense of 
the real purpose of life and the true meaning of 
death. 

It were hardly necessary for me to make here 
more than a passing reflection on an always in- 
teresting truth ; "one that never palls, never tires, 
never grows dull through familiarity, but is al- 
ways stirring, new and original, namely, that 
death is inevitable. Yes, death is inevitable. It 
comes to all. There is no escape, no exception. 
The aims and purposes that men propose to 
themselves in life are varied. Different things 
happen to different men. All destinies are in- 
dividual. But it is the common destiny to die." 
— Father Faber. 

"The small and the great are there," says holy 
Job, "and the slave is free from his master." — 
iii:19. "One man dieth strong and hale, rich and 
happy, but another dieth in bitterness of soul 
and without any riches. And yet they shall sleep 
together in the dust, and worms shall cover 
them."— Id. cxxi:23-25-26. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 73 

I know that thou will deliver me to death, 
where a house is appointed for every one that 
liveth.— Id. XXX :33. 

"Not to thy eternal resting place 
Shalt thou retire alone * * » 

* * * Thou shalt lie down 

With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good. 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
A.11 in one mighty sepulchre. 

* * * All that breathe 

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 

Plod on, and each one^ as before, will chase 

His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 

Their mirth and their employments and shall come 

And make their bed with thee. As the long train 

Of ages glide away, the sons of men. 

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 

In the full strength of years, matron and maid. 

And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man. 

Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side 

By those, who, in their turn, shall follow them." 

— William Cullen Bryant: Thanatopsis, 

We must, therefore, submit ourselves to the 
•inevitable, reconcile ourselves to the certainty, 
advancing to meet the unavoidable as soldiers 
advance to give the countersign, marching from 
the barracks or the picket-post to the great gen- 
eral's headquarters. 



74 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

Furthermore, death is an act of which we can 
have no experience, for the reason that it can 
be done only once. No, we can have no experi- 
ence of dying. No one has ever yet returned to 
tell us what death is like, or how it feels to die, 
or whether the actual act of dissolution is accom- 
panied by sensation or not. A man who through 
disease or casualty has lost consciousness, — has 
become to all appearances dead — and is then 
resuscitated, can really tell us nothing about it, 
for he did not die ; the life force did not leave the 
body. The poet has delved deep into the awful 
mystery of death, and may have descried terrors 
invisible to human view, but beyond this he can- 
not go. "I have stood,''says a celebrated physi- 
cian, "by the death-bed of men who told me they 
were going to destruction, and I saw them pass 
peacefully to their long last sleep. I have looked 
at their dead faces a few minutes later, and saw 
thereon a look of fear, of horror, that was not 
visible when the heart gave its faint throb and 
then stood still. I have had others tell me, al- 
most with their last gasp, that they were going to 
heaven. They passed away with wan, weary 
faces that were pitiful to contemplate, but before 
they became rigid a sweet smile, as of an angel's 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 75 

dream, overspread the pallid features. The deep 
lines of suffering faded out, and the aged looked 
almost youthful; the weary and wan became ra- 
diant. 

What causes this change? When does death 
actually occur? We say when the breath and the 
pulse cease. But who can give us undeniable 
assurance that this is really death after all? Who 
can say that the spirit takes its departure from 
earth with the last breath, the last faint heart- 
beat? May it not cling for some moments to 
its shattered tenement ere it wings its flight, be- 
fore it faces those terrors, or enters into those 
transcendent glories which await it in the great 
hereafter?'' 

"Father/' said the child, "what is Death?" 
"The rest, my child, 

When the strife and the toil are o'er; 

The angel of God, who, calm and mild. 

Says we need fight no more; 

Who, driving away the demon band. 

Bids the din of the battle cease; 

Takes banner and spear from our falling hand, 

And proclaims an eternal peace/' 
"Let me die, father! I tremble and fear 

To yield in that terrible strife!" 
"The crown must be won for heaven, dear, 

In the battle-field of life; 

My child, though thy foes are strong and tried, 



76 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

He loveth the weak and small; 

The angels of Heaven are on thy side. 

And God is over all!" — Adelaide A, Proctor, 

Father Faber, v/ho has written so learnedly 
and so beautifully on such a variety of themes, 
who could stretch a thought to almost incom- 
parable length, and yet who, we know not why, is 
seemingly being supplanted in the domain of 
spirituality and letters by others less fitted to 
survive, speaks thus: 

''The separation of body and soul which we 
call death, the end of that long companionship 
between them is a mystery we have never been 
able to fathom, and which v^e should have im- 
agined, if we had not been otherwise taught, in- 
volved our very existence. Life without a body 
is difficult to picture. We only know that there 
is such a life; that it is a very wonderful one, 
wherever it is lived; and that v/e shall some day 
and somewhere live it ourselves. But, how the 
soul will disentangle itself from that complicated 
body in which it now lives ubiquitiously, we can- 
not tell.'' 

Science, in her bold flights, has gone far, it is 
true, but it has not yet lifted the veil of mystery 
which the Almighty has hung over the couch <^i 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 77 

death. It speaks no word of relief when tears 
gush forth and sorrow sears the soul. It extends 
no helping hand when misfortune smites and the 
blows of adversity fall thick and fast. Coldly it 
looks down on the grave, where all that is dear to 
us lies hidden forever, and silently pursues its 
path of knowledge. In our darkest hour, when 
all joy seems drained from our life, and despair 
flaps her cheerless wings as we lay away in the 
cold, dull clay all that gave to life its sunshine 
and its charm, go to the scientist then, and what 
will he do? He will take the tear we shed, an- 
alyze it into its component parts, and for our 
comfort will explain the law that with unswerv- 
ing fidelity does its fatal work. Does this satis- 
fy us? Can we still the turbulent emotions, or 
feed the hungering soul, with scientific apparatus 
and a demonstration of laws and rules? As well 
might the weak voice of the child outroar the 
wild and furious raging of the storm. But when 
fortune frowns, and all looks dark and drear, 
then it is, if ever, that religion comes to our aid. 
In the dark and gloomy night of death religion 
throws a halo of light and peace around the 
Christian soul. "Christian hope then sees a star 
and listening love catches the rustle of angelic 



78 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

wings." Then it is that out of its capacious bo- 
som flows the cahn and refreshing stream of joy 
and comfort; for, though the heavens be never so 
black the star of hope shines with unfading lus- 
tre for the truly fervent and pious soul. Relig- 
ion lays its gentle hand upon the shoulder bent 
with suffering and points upward to that celes- 
tial realm where sorrow is a thing unknown and 
tears can never fall. The clouds are rifted, and 
amid a glorious brightness there resounds a ten- 
der voice, exclaiming in accents of pity and of 
love: '*Noli temere; ego tecum." — "Fear not, 
for I am with you." "And God shall wipe away 
all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no 
more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall 
be any more, for the former things are passed 
away." — ^Apoc. cxxi:4. 

"If then," to return again to Father Faber, 
"we have no experience of dying, what follows? 
Something of very grave importance, — which is 
not without terror also — namely, that, as we have 
no experience of it, we can form no habit of it, 
and it is habit which at once makes the thing to 
be done easier, and us who do it calmer in the 
doing. But, may not this be said of any import- 
ant action which is to be done for the first time? 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'* 79 

Certainly. But then it is another feature of death 
that with it there is no next time. It can be done 
but once. Everything, therefore, depends upon 
the doing of it well. However it is done, well or 
ill, it is simply irreparable. Once over, all dis- 
cussion, deliberation, retrospect, discovery of 
mistakes, fresh plans, are out of the question. It 
was one, final, absolute, immutable act; and, now 
that it is done, it must be left as it is, helplessly 
fertile of eternal consequences." 

Sisara was nailed fast by the hand of Jael in 
the place and attitude in which he went to sleep; 
thus will death place us permanently in the situ- 
ation in which it will find us. "If the tree fall 
to the south, or to the north, in what place soever 
it shall fall, there shall it lie." — Eccles. xi:3. 

If when death comes we are found in the grace 
of God, happy shall we be forevermore. But, if 
death shall find our souls in sin, we shall exclaim 
bitterly and despairingly "ergo erravimus!" — 
"therefore we have erred," and for our error there 
shall be no remedy for endless ages of ages. It 
is related of an ancient king, Dionysius of Sicily, 
I think, that, to make one of his subjects under- 
stand the fear with which he occupied the throne, 
he commanded him to sit at table with a sword 



80 'Vld ThGughts on Old Themes'' 

suspended over him by a slender thread. The 
apprehension that the thread should give way 
filled him with so much terror that he could 
scarcely taste food. We are all, friends, in like 
danger; for the sword of death, on which depends 
our eternal salvation, may at any moment fall 
upon us and cut the slender thread of life. 

With reason, then, did the fear of an unhappy 
eternity cause the venerable Father Avila, the 
Apostle of Spain, to exclaim on receiving the 
notice of his death : "Oh, that I had a little more 
time to prepare for it!" That the same fear 
should induce the holy Abbot Agatho, who spent 
so many years in penance, to cry aloud at the 
hour of his dissolution: "Alas! What will be- 
come of me? Who can know the judgments of 
God, which are other than those of men?" That 
St. Arsenius, on being asked by his disciples the 
cause of his alarm, should reply: "My children, 
this fear is not new to me; I have had it always 
during my whole life." Or that holy Job should 
tremble when he said: "What shall I do when 
the Lord shall rise to judge? And when He 
shall examine, what shall I answer Him?" — 
xxxi :14. 

"The worst reality," however, as the author of 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 81 

Ben Hur comfortingly reminds us, **is never un- 
endurable when it comes out from behind the 
cloud through which we at first saw it darkly, 
never." Let us hope it may be so with death. 
Yet, all men fear it, and some fear it so terribly 
that it shadows their whole life. The infidel 
may boast as he will of not fearing death, and 
boldly proclaim his assurance that after this pres- 
ent life there is absolutely nothing; but there is 
in every human heart an instinctive conscious- 
ness of a future existence, and that consciousness 
can never be entirely obliterated. The blackest 
criminal, hardened by his crimes and transgres- 
sions, must at times, despite all efforts to the 
contrary, tremble at the idea of confronting the 
eternal, inexorable Judge; while the most pro- 
nounced atheist cannot but feel his very heart 
sink within him when his thoughts dwell upon 
death and its possible consequences. 

Shakespeare, with his remarkable faculty for 
grasping and strongly expressing great ideas, 
makes Hamlet say: 

'To be, or not to be, that is the question — 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 



82 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

And by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep- 
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to! — *tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die, — to sleep — 
To sleep! — perchance to dream! — Aye, there's the rub: 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause. There's the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life: 
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time. 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay. 
The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes. 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, 
To groan and sweat under a weary life, 
But that the dread of something after death — 
That undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveler returns — puzzles the will. 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 
Than fly to others that we know not of?" 

— HamleVs Soliloquy on Death, Act III, Sc, /. 

Yes, I emphatically repeat that it is with rea- 
son we fear death. Death is the punishment of 
original prevarication; hence comes that whole- 
some horror with which we repel it. A clergy- 
m.an once met a little boy crying bitterly at his 
father's door, afraid to go in. He asked him 
what was the matter, and he replied that his 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 83 

mother had sent him out clean in the morning, 
but he had soiled his clothes and so he feared to 
go in because his father would punish him. Thus 
is it with us all. We have soiled our characters 
by sin; and, therefore, we fear death — we dread 
the meeting \vith our Father. 

The young fear death, because preparation for 
it is so uncongenial to their habits of thought 
and time of life. They dwell in brightness, and 
experience has not told them yet how really au- 
tumnal is the very spring of youth. The old 
must fear death because it is so near. Its shadow 
is already on them, and they shiver because the 
sunshine is intercepted. Yes, and the sinner 
fears death because his penance is not yet done; 
and the preacher only irritates him when he says 
that the longer death is delayed the less likely 
IS he to die repentant. 

The fear of death, however, is not in itself an 
evil, since this fear is innate and abides in us as a 
memorial of our primitive immortality. The 
great evil is to fear death more than sin; or 
rather to love sin, while the mere thought of 
death makes us tremble. "If it be an evil," says 
Bossuet, "for the body to have lost its soul, is it 
not by far worse for the soul to have lost its 



U 'VId Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

God? And if we be horrified at the sight of a 
corpse lying on the ground deprived of motion 
and of life, is it not more horrible still to con- 
sider a human soul become a spiritual corpse 
which, being separated from God by sin, has no 
longer any life or sentiment except what renders 
its own death eternal?" 

Of course the really devout and practical 
Catholic, the one who has tried, at least, to serve 
his Maker well and faithfully his whole life long, 
cannot see in death anything mystic or uncer- 
tain. That holy and wholesome fear which he 
feels has ever been a part of his nature, becomes 
at last the smoothest pillow upon which his dy- 
ing head can repose. Death is not for him the 
"undiscovered country" of Hamlet's Soliloquy, 
but rather, as Tennyson beautifully expresses it : 

'The great world's Altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God." 

Memoriam, 



The Old, Old Story— Death. 



'*/ know not how long I shall continue, and 
whether after awhile my Maker may take me 
away r— Job XXXII: 22. 

^^ Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death 
of his saints.'*'^ — Ps. CXV : 15. 

" Watch^ because you know not the day nor the 
hourr—St Matt, XXV: 13. 

^^And what I say to you^ I say to all: Watch J* 
—St. Mark XIII: JT^ 

*^Be ready, for at what hour you think not the 
Son of Man will come^'^ — St, Luke XII : 4,0. 

^^It is uncertain at what place death awaits thee. 
Wait thou for it at every place?'^ — Seneca. 

^'Let death and exile, and all other things which 
appear terrible y be daily before your eyes, but death 
chiefly, and you will never entertain any abject 
thought, nor too eagerly covet anything!'^ 

— Epictetus. 



V. 

In the ancient city of Venice, the royal palace 
and the great penal institution of the govern- 
ment are connected by a curious and dismal 
looking structure called the "Bridge of Sighs.'* 
This bridge is so named for the reason that he 
who crosses it from the palace, to expiate in the 
prison on the opposite side the punishment that 
his crime has merited, is sadly certain that his 
doom is forever sealed, and that he shall never 
again be restored to liberty and life. 

Having spoken to you in preceding sermons 
on the tremendous subjects of Time and Eter- 
nity, it is only right and proper that we should 
take our stand and journey together to-night, in 
our reflections, on that mysterious bridge that 
separates these two periods of our existence, a 
bridge that we must all eventually pass over — 
the mysterious bridge of death. 

The race has been star-gazing since the birtH 
of time; yet, "it is a strange thing/' as Ruskin 
remarks, "how little, in general, people know 

87 



88 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 

about the sky." Man has been looking into the 
face of death since the stars first cast their twink- 
ling rays upon him; yet what, after all, do we 
know about it? If life is a riddle, surely death is 
a mystery. We all perfectly realize, with the 
bard of Avon, that "we must endure our going 
hence, even as our coming hither;" that death is, 
and must be, for each and every one of us. "Yet, 
how strangely mysterious is the law that presides 
over the departure of souls from this world ! 
Young or old, tarnished with vice or resplendent 
with virtue, they disappear into silence. They go 
forth without telling who summons them, with- 
out saying why or how. Their faces suddenly set 
toward eternity, and look back on us no more.'' 
— Anon, 

Elsewhere we have generalized on this old, old 
topic; here we will endeavor to bring the subject 
more intimately home to ourselves; and this, too, 
by following a very ordinary and commonplace 
current of thought. Truly, there is no subject 
with v/hich we have been so long familiar, none 
that presents itself so continually before our eyes 
in every possible shape and form, and with all 
the circumstances with which we are so well ac- 
quainted, as the old-time subject of death. It is 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 8^ 

moreover, of all subjects that pertain to man, by 
far the most important, inasmuch as in it are 
concentrated his dearest interests both for time 
and eternity. "The bed of death," says our 
American Demosthenes, Daniel Webster, 
"brings every human being to his pure individ- 
uality ; to the intense contemplation of that deep- 
est and most solemn of all relations, the relation 
between the creature and his Creator." 

It is the pivot on which all man's happiness 
turns; the harbor where he casts anchor, or is 
wrecked forever. Death is, indeed, no stranger 
to us; the ever-varying aspect of nature's scen- 
ery, the common occurrences of daily life, are 
continually suggesting to us the sad lesson of our 
mortality, and of that goal toward which we are 
hourly, nay momentarily, traveling. 

The marble monuments that loom over the 
hilltops of every village and city throughout the 
length and breadth of the land, the habiliments of 
sorrow that deck the forms of persons in every 
walk of life, the solemn and impressive cere- 
monies with which, from time to time, Holy 
Church engages our attention, all, all forcibly 
remind us that we, too, are passing away, and 
that perhaps, ere the rising of the morrow's sun. 



90 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

or the going down thereof, we shall have taken 
our place in the silent halls of death. Every- 
thing dies; and on this balmy summer morning 
if I lay my ear to the ground I seem to hear, 
from every point of the compass, the heavy step 
of men who carry a corpse to its burial. Long- 
fellow, in his exquisite little poem, "The Reaper 
and the Flowers," has beautifully likened this 
whole world to one vast field, in which **Death 
with his sickle keen" labors every minute, every 
second. 

"He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, 
And the flowers that grow between." 

We may be now like the grass that is most dis- 
tant from the steel; there may be acres upon 
acres between us and the severing blade, but 
the strong, patient Reaper is nearing us, slowly 
perhaps, but surely. Listen! Listen, and we 
can almost catch the sharp swish of his scythe 
and hear the murmur of the falling grass. These 
admonitions, enforced, as they are so frequently, 
by the happening to some among us of that event 
which, sooner or later, must happen to us all, are 
drowned, nevertheless, in the turmoil of the busy 
world. It is only the louder call that awakens 
our attention, when death has struck down some 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 91 

^'shining mark/* and bids us pause and ponder 
on the brief and transitory tenor of our earthly 

existence. 

And yet, "though there is nothing we may 
call our own but death, and that small model of 
the barren earth which serves as paste and cover 
to our bones,"* notwithstanding our intimate 
connections with it, there is hardly anything, 
perhaps, in the whole range of human history 
more strikingly singular than the apathy with 
which man regards this tremendous subject. For 
the possesion of a little gilded dust, the acquire- 
ment of an imaginary honor, or the enjoyment 
of a short-lived pleasure, men will brave innu- 
merable obstacles, nay, will suffer almost any 
privation; but for the attainment of an eternity 
of felicity, or the avoidance of never-ending mis- 
ery which depends on death, they are loath to 
undergo the slightest exertion. Is it any wonder 
then that when the grim monster comes at last, 
he comes when least expected, and that the soul, 
unapprised of its peril, is enslaved and lost for- 
ever? Let us, learning wisdom from the folly of 
others, endeavor now and for all time, to obtain 



* Shakespeare. 



iJ2 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

a vivid representation of that last harrowing 
drama in which we shall all figure ; so that if we 
expect to meet death as a friend we may prepare 
to entertain him; if as an enemy, to overcome 
him. Though language is rich on the subject of 
death, still the whole topic may be sum.med up 
in two very brief considerations, namely, the ab- 
solute certainty that we shall die, and the utter 
uncertainty as to the time and circumstances of 
our death. 

Reason, revelation, and the experience of near- 
ly six thousand years convince us of the fact that 
our life here below is only a dreary exile, and 
that, whoever would enter the portals of his true 
country must first pass through the low door of 
the tomb. Death alone is certain. I know not 
whether the child that has just been brought into 
being will attain the years of manhood, or 
whether he will be called away in the days of his 
purity and innocence. I cannot say whether he 
will grow" up a peace-abiding citizen, a credit to 
his parents and an honor to society, or whether 
he will become the scourge of humanity, and the 
ccntemnor of all law and authority. I know not 
whether he will be rich or poor, learned or un- 
learned, wise or unwise; but vdiat I do know, 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 93 

beyond the possibility of a doubt, is that he will 
most certainly die. 

I cannot say whether, in the inscrutable de- 
signs of the Almighty, I who speak, or you who 
hear my words, am destined for long or short 
duration; but v/hat I know most surely is, that a 
day will come when I shall never see the night, 
or a night in which I shall never behold the 
morning. Men have doubted every assertion, 
have denied almost every other truth, but this 
one never. For what sane man would ever at- 
tempt to question a fact which hourly experience 
confirms? Yes, **it is appointed for all men once 
to die." The irreversible decree has been issued 
against us; and, not till the awakening blast of 
the Archangel's trumpet will have proclaimed to 
the buried nations that time shall be no more, 
v/ill the weird spectre waive his right to claim us 
as his own. "The wages of sin is death," says 
the apostle. Therefore so surely as we are sin- 
ners, so surely shall we die. Millions and mil- 
lions of men have appeared on earth and passed 
away like shadows — Solomon with his wisdom, 
Caesar with his victories, Croesus with his rich- 
es. These and the innumerable host of the de- 
parted great exemplify the melancholy theme. 



9i "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

The fairest pictures that hang on memory's 
walls are associated with the sad image of death. 
Alas! how often have we not wept over the 
tombs of those who had smiled about our cradle? 
How many have been the companions of the 
sunny hours of childhood, the friends of our 
riper years, that are now no more! How num- 
berless the beings who, starting out on the jour- 
ney of life long after ourselves, have yet preceded 
us to the tomb! On occasions of joy and glad- 
ness we assemble around the festive board, but 
miss the beaming countenance, the loving glance, 
of one we always reckoned among the good and 
pure. And oh how often, when weighed down 
with the trials and sorrows of a cold, unfeeling 
world, have we not turned for encouragement 
and sympathy to the fond friends that live in our 
hearts, only to be startled by the bitter remem- 
brance that the icy hand of death has snatched 
them from our side. Yes, the young and the old, 
the rich and the poor, the saint and the sinner, 
have alike fallen victims to the relentless 
destroyer. We have mourned over the lost 
friends of our tenderest affection ; we have heard 
the cold and cruel clods of earth fall thick and 
heavily on the last mortal remains of the faithful 



''Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 95 

and the true, the kindest and the best. We have 
seen the strong man cast down in the midst of 
his strength, and the powerful in the days of his 
prosperity. We have beheld the gay and buoy- 
ant-hearted grow weak and falter in the midst of 
their most ardent expectations, and finally lay 
dov/n the burden of life in their brightest and 
palmiest days. Where is the home from which 
we do not miss the loving father, the tender 
mother, the gentle sister, or the kind and aflfec- 
tionate brother? Earth's fairest prospects are 
blighted, the dwellings of wealth and plenty ren- 
dered sad and desolate, because an idolized pa- 
rent, or a fond and endearing child has been sud- 
denly and unexpectedly cut down by the re- 
morseless "King of Terrors." Neither the sighs 
and lamentations of the penitent Magdalen, the 
transplendent sanctity of the Holy Precursor, 
nor the burning love of the Virgin Disciple, no 
not even the unsullied purity of the Immaculate 
Mother of God Himself could retard the tyrant 
in his course, or ward off the fatal consequence 
of our primeval transgression. The most beauti- 
ful life that was ever lived on earth went out 
amid the torturing gloom that enshrouded the 
summit of Mount Calvary. "Yes, O Jesus, Thou 



96 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

too hast deigned to die in order that Vv^e might 
live! Thy bitter death is the vast sunset, in 
which we all sink to rest; it lingers on earth's 
horizon till the day of doom, and we all set in it, 
encompassed with a mellow glory which radiates 
from Thy five most precious wounds."* They 
who have lived longest have been obliged to suc- 
cumb at last. Adam lived nine hundred and thirty 
years, and he died; Mathusala nine hundred 
and sixty-nine years, and he died. The sum to- 
tal of the history of the patriarchs of the law, as 
well as of all the men that have ever breathed the 
breath of life, is recorded in that one pithy sen- 
tence: "They lived, and they died." So, like- 
v/ise, what we now say of others will one day be 
said of us: "They lived, and they died." Where 
are all those who once made the world resound 
with the story of their greatness? They are 
dead. Where are the mighty ones of ages long 
gone by, the heroes and sages of Greece and 
Rome? The grave answers, they are no more; 
they have gone the way of all flesh; and from 
proud mausoleum or storied urn they echo back 
the never-ceasing wail of all past generations: 



♦ Father Faber. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 97 

"Yesterday it was our turn, to-morrow it will be 
yours." "O eloquent, just and mighty Death! 
Whom none could advise thou hast persuaded, 
what none hath dared thou hast done, and whom 
all the world hath flattered thou only hast cast 
out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn 
together all the far-stretched greatness, all the 
pride, cruelty and ambition of men, and covered 
it all over with these two narrow words: Hie 
jacet! Here he lies!" — ^'^V Walter Raleigh. 

Death, therefore, is most certain, and nothing 
can avert the dismal stroke that lies pending over 
us all. Could honors, wealth or social position 
exonerate anyone from the general doom that 
threatens all humanity, some, indeed, might 
claim exemption; but all 

"Await alike the inevitable hour — 
The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

— Grays Elegy. 

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, 
and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, 
carries the banished man home, and teaches all 
of poor humanity that it is dust. "Men's faces, 
looking into a sunset," says Father Faber, "are 
golden; so will our lives be if they are always 
looking into the face of coming death." 



96 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

"Death is as near to the young as to the old/* 
writes Rev. Thomas Adams; ''here is all the dif- 
ference: death stands behind the young man's 
back, before the old man's face." And Cicero 
tells us that ''the whole life of a philosopher is 
the meditation of his death.'' "Blessed," de- 
clares the devout a Kempis, "is he who keepeth 
the hour of his death continually before his eyes 
and daily putteth himself in order for death." 
Book i :xxiii. Yes, and blessed beyond measure, 
too, is he who endeavors to realize, ever more 
and more, that whatever else betide, after all 

*'Death is the only discipline we are born for; 
All studies else are but as circular lines, 
And death the center, where they all must meet." 

— Anon. 

But, as death is certain, so, too, are the time 
and circumstances of its coming most uncertain. 
When shall I die? Will it be in the morning or 
in the evening, at noontide or at the lonely hour 
of midnight? Shall I be summoned hence in the 
pleasant days of spring, the balmy hours of sum- 
mer, or will my flight be in the cold and dreary 
time of winter? Shall I live till the wrinkles of 
age will have furrowed my brow, or will the pass- 
ing cloud of death dim the brilliant lustre of my 



*Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 99 

life just as it is attaining its meridian splendor? 
Alas! of this none of us can have any positive 
assurance ; for * Vho hath known the mind of the 
Lord, or who shall search His testimonies?" 
Well and truthfully, then, wasat said: 

**Leaves have their time to fall. 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
And stars to set; — but all. 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death." 

— Felicia Hemans, 

Where shall I die? Will it be in the gay and 
crowded city, or in the quiet and retirement of 
the country? Shall I breathe my last in the sa- 
cred asylum of home, surrounded by the dearest 
ties that bind me to earth, or shall I meet my 
end in the trackless wilds of some foreign clime, 
neglected and alone? Will it be beneath the 
scorching rays of a tropical sun, or where bound- 
less snows infest the circuit of the dreary year? 
Will my wan and emaciated body be consigned 
to that fit receptacle, the tomb, there to com- 
mingle with the dust from which it borrowed its 
existence, or shall my bones be cradled in the 
depths of the mighty ocean, where every passing 
gale will sing my requiem as ages fade into 
each other? Will death leap out of its ambush 
LoFC. 



100 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

upon me, and claim me as the hopeless victim of 
eternal ruin just as I am in the act of transgress- 
ing God's holy law, or shall I be called away 
when in the exact performance of every duty? 

How shall I die? Will loving friends be there 
to raise my drooping head, to print the last kiss 
of love and affection on my pale and sunken 
cheek? Will God's anointed be at my side to ad- 
minister the last consolations of Holy Church, 
to soothe my lonely soul in its voyage to the "un- 
discovered country?" Shall I, with the peace of 
heaven on my countenance and the God of the 
Eucharist within my breast, be borne by gentle 
attendant angels to the abodes of the blest, or 
will angry demons, amid the despairing cries of 
disconsolate friends, convey my lost and unhappy 
scul to the gloomy halls of the damned? Will 
the lamp of my life be gradually consumed by a 
painful and lingering disease, or shall I be called 
hence without even time to say "Lord have mer- 
cy on my soul?" Alas, alas! I know not. I only 
know that I shall die; but when, or where, or 
how, are secrets that lie buried in the impene- 
trable knowledge and wisdom of that Almighty 
Being Who has doomed us all to undergo the 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thmes" 101 

bitter stroke of death, but has reserved for Him- 
self the time and manner of its visitation. 

Since, then, death is so undeniably certain, and 
the time and circumstances of its coming so ut- 
terly unknown, does it not behoove us to be al- 
ways on the alert, lest, like the foolish virgins 
of the gospel, the bridegroom come and find us 
unprepared? Would it not be the very height of 
folly to postpone, even for one single instant, 
preparation for an event on which depends our 
happiness or misery for all eternity? Oh, let us 
be wise in time. Let us lose no opportunity to 
secure for ourselves that grace of graces — a good 
death. In the midst of hopes and cares, appre- 
hensions and disquietudes, let us regard every 
day that dawns upon us as though it were to be 
our last. Let us oftentimes, even in the enjoy- 
ment of health, contemplate our last end, and 
that final dissolution that will terminate this 
present life. Let us fancy to ourselves that this 
event may take place at any moment; and at the 
foot of the crucifix offer the sacrifice of the dear- 
est considerations that bind us to our present 
state. It is by doing thus, and thus only, that 
when the summons comes for us to follow in the 
footsteps of those who have gone before, we may, 



102 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

fortified by the last rites of our Holy Church, 
and an unfaltering confidence in Jesus, Mary and 
Joseph, close our eyes on the receding glories of 
this world only to open them forever on the 
grander possibilities of the world to come. 

*'So live, that, when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To the pale realm of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go, not like the quarry-slave at night. 
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

—Bryant's Thanatopsis, 



The Tongue. 



VI. 

THE TONGUE. 

"The boneless tongue, so small and weak, 
Can crush and kill," declared the Greek. 

'The tongue destroys a greater horde,*' 
The Turk asserts, ''than does the sword/* 

The Persian proverb wisely saith: 
*'A lengthy tongue, an early death/* 

Or sometimes takes this form instead: 
**Don*t let your tongue cut off your head/' 

*The tongue can speak a word whose speed/* 
Says the Chinese, "outstrips the steed/' 

While Arab sages this impart: 
"The tongue's great storehouse is the heart/* 

From Hebrew wit this maxim sprung: 
"Though feet should slip, ne'er let the tongue/' 

The sacred writer crowns the whole: 
"Who keeps his tongue doth keep his soul "—Anon, 

"Who keeps his tongue doth keep his soul.*'— Prov. 
xiii:3. 

Among the distinguishing endowments which 
God in His all-wise providence has bestowed 

105 



106 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Upon man, and by which he is elevated in his 
nature and power far above all other terrestrial 
beings, none is, perhaps, more prominent, or 
places him so strikingly in contrast with other 
creatures, than the gift of speech — the power of 
expressing to others, by words, his thoughts, his 
feelings, and his wants. To realize the immense 
value of such a gift we have but to ask ourselves 
the question — "What would man be without it?'' 

Without it would vanish all the wondrous 
works of his mind and hands which we behold 
around us. In fact, we could not at all imagine 
him living in a world like ours; for without the 
power of intercommunication there would also 
be wanting the co-operation necessary to accom- 
plish the marvels therein contained. 

That there is in us an animal, aye, a bestial 
nature, has never been denied. 

"We cannot be reminded too often that all the 
materials of our knowledge we share with ani- 
mals ; that like them we begin with sensuous im- 
pressions and then, like ourselves, and like our- 
selves only, we proceed to the general, the ideal, 
and the eternal. We cannot be reminded too 
often that in many things we are like the beasts 
of the field, but that like ourselves, and like our- 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 107 

selves only, we can rise superior to our bestial 
self and strive after what is unselfish, good and 
Godlike/' — Friedrich Maximilian Muller. 

"What is it that constitutes and makes man 
what he is?'' asks a well-known scientist.* 

"What is it but his power of language, giving 
him the means of recording his experiences, and 
making every generation wiser than its prede- 
cessor. 

"What is it but this power of speech, which 
enables men to be men, looking before and after, 
and, in some dim sense, understanding the work- 
ings of this wondrous universe." 

Even in a country where the roses have no 
fragrance, and the magistrates no sense of hon- 
or; where the needle points to the south, and 
the old men fly kites; where the roads bear no 
vehicles, and the ships no keels; where the place 
of honor is on your left hand, and the seat of 
intellect is in the stomach ; where to take off your 
hat is an insolent gesture, and to wear white 
garments is to put yourself in mourning — even 
there we are not astonished to find the most in- 
tricate and unwieldy vehicle of thought that ever 



* Thomas Henry Huxley^ 



108 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

obtained among any people, a literature without 
an alphabet, and a language without a grammar." 
— Geo. Wingrove Cooke, 

"The tongue can speak a word whose speed/' 
Says the Chinese, "outstrips the steed/' 

Furthermore, it is remarkable that the lowest 
of savages — men whose language is said to be 
no better than the clucking of hens or the twit- 
tering of birds, and who have been declared, in 
many respects, lower than even animals, possess 
this one specific characteristic, that if you take 
one of their babes and bring it up, say in Amer- 
ica, it will learn to speak as well as any Amer- 
ican-born child; while no amount of education 
wall elicit any attempts at language from the 
highest animals, whether biped or quadruped. — 
Adapted from Max Miiller. 

Language, then, is the one great barrier be- 
tween the brute and man. Man speaks, and no 
brute has ever uttered a word. To man alone 
has this wonderful faculty of talking been given, 
and its regulation should be considered by him as 
one of his most important duties — to see that it 
is used in a manner beneficial to himself and to 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 109 

Others, and for the purpose alone for which it 
was bestowed upon him. 

But alas! If we look around on the circle of 
general society, we shall find that this, Hke every 
other precious gift with which man has been 
blessed, is not only sadly abused, but worse; that 
conversation not alone useless and gossipy, but 
even malicious and scandalous, is a pervading 
evil, and that the injuries and mischief diffused 
by it are almost incredible. 

We hold up our hands in holy horror against 
the bull fights of Spain, and all right-minded 
men do likewise against those human bull fights 
that are disgracing our boasted American civili- 
zation ; yet w^e can sit and applaud when we hear 
men, and even women, attack each other with 
the most deadly, the most poisonous, the most 
cutting weapon that can be imagined — the 
tongue. 

You have all, doubtless, either read or heard 
of the philosopher of olden times who told his 
servant that he had invited some of his friends to 
dine with him, and that he wanted him to get 
the best thing that he could find in the market. 
When the day for the banquet arrived, and the 
philosopher and his guests sat down to dinner, 



110 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

they were very much surprised to find nothing' 
before them but tongue; — four or five courses of 
tongue — tongue served in one way, and tongue 
served in another way, so that before the dinner 
was over the philosopher quite lost his patience 
and said to the servant: **Did I not tell you to 
get the best thing the market could afford?" 
"And have I not done so," replied the servant. 
*'Is not the tongue the organ of eloquence, the 
organ of kindness, the organ of worship?" 
*Well, then," continued the philosopher, "to- 
morrow I shall give another dinner, and I want 
you to get the worst thing in the market." On 
the morrow, when the philosopher and his friends 
again took their places at table, there was noth- 
ing before them but tongue; — four or five 
courses of tongue — tongue in this shape, and 
tongue in that shape, so that the philosopher en- 
tirely lost patience and said to his servant: "Did 
I not tell you to get the worst thing in the mar- 
ket?" "And have I not done so," replied the 
servant. "Is not the tongue the organ of blas- 
phemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of 
calumny and lying?" 

"A tart temper," says a learned writer,* "never 

* Washington Irving, 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 111 

mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only 
edged tool that grows keener with constant use." 
And the apostle St. James does not hesitate to 
declare that ''the tongue is a fire, a world of In- 
iquity. We put bits,'' he says, "into the mouths of 
horses that they may obey us, and we turn about 
their whole body. Great ships are driven by 
strong winds, yet they are moved about with a 
sm.all helm whithersoever the force of the gov- 
ernor willeth. So also the tongue is, indeed, a 
little member, and boasteth great things.'' — ciii. 
"Every nature of beasts and of bird and of ser- 
pent," he continues, "is tamed and hath been 
tamed by the nature of man. But the tongue no 
man can tame, an unquiet evil full of deadly poi- 
son. By it we bless God and the Father, and by it 
we curse men who are made after the likeness of 
God." — Id. "The whisperer and the double- 
tongued is accursed," says the scripture, "for he 
hath troubled many that were at peace." The 
tongue of a third person hath disquieted many, 
and scattered them from nation to nation. It 
hath destroyed the strong cities of the rich and 
overthrown the houses of the great. He that 
hearkeneth to it shall never have rest, neither 
shall he have a friend in whom he may repose. 



112 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

The stroke of a whip maketh a blue mark, but 
the stroke of the tongue will break the bones. 

*The boneless tongue, so small and weak, 
Can crush and kill/' declares the Greek. 

Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, 
but not so many as have perished by their own 
tongues. 

*The tongue destroys a greater horde," 
The Turk asserts, ''than does the sword." 

''Hedge in thy ears w^ith thorns and make 
doors and bars to thy mouth. Melt down thy 
gold and silver and make a balance for thy words, 
and a just bridle for thy mouth, and take heed 
lest thou slip with thy tongue and fall in the sight 
of thy enemies, who lie in wait for thee, and thy 
fall be incurable unto death." — Eccles. xxviii. 

This is strong language, surely, but it is the 
language of inspiration. '*He that setteth 
bounds to his words," says Solomon, "is know- 
ing and wise," and, to be able to govern well the 
tongue is accounted so great a virtue that the 
apostle St. James assures us that ''if any man 
offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." 
While, on the contrary, ''if any man think him- 
self religious, not bridling his tongue, that man^s 
religion is vain." 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes** 113 

Do you wish, then, to become a virtuous and 
perfect man, a saint even? The apostle St. 
James assures you that silence will accomplish 
your desires, for silence never yet betrayed any 
one. Tell me, did you ever know a great talker 
that was much given to prayer or to any other 
spiritual duty? No, certainly not; for the heart 
of the talkative man is continually taken up with 
vain and unprofitable entertainments, and is al- 
ways wandering abroad and occupied with use- 
less and frivolous objects. Therefore, the Holy 
Ghost says: "He that uses many words wounds 
his own soul." — Eccles. xx. "Where there is 
much talk sin will not be wanting;" and, lastly, 
"to speak much is a very great folly." 

In these enlightened days we are too apt to be 
led away by talk. Indeed, it may be said that to 
talk is as easy as to walk. Ah, yes; and in fact 
there are some who find it, by their very nature, 
difficult to do much walking, but who can sit all 
day and talk. But do you know that the com- 
mon fluency of speech in many men and most 
women is owing to a scarcity of words? For 
whoever is a master of language, and has a mind 
full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate 
upon the choice of both, whereas common speak- 



lU ''Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

ers have only one kind of ideas, and one set of 
words to clothe them in, and these are always 
ready at the mouth, just as you can go faster out 
of church when it is almost empty than you can 
when a crowd is at the door. It is, then, con- 
cerning the way in which people differ in the 
spirit or intention that impels the action of the 
tongue that I wish to direct your attention, or 
rather, I wish to show you some of the particular 
ways in which a person, by perverting the power 
of talking, becomes to others if not pernicious, at 
least extremely ridiculous, and even disgusting. 
There is one class of talkers who on account of 
their blind self conceit are more to be pitied than 
condemmed. They are what is known in com- 
mon phrase as terrible talkers, and they derive 
their title not so much from the terrible nature, 
as from the terrible amount of talking that they 
do. These poor creatures seem to think that 
the main purpose of their existence is to keep 
the tongue going, and that it was given to them 
solely as a means of self-glorification. Concern- 
ing any subject, they, of course, know it all. 
They are always the heroes of their own stories; 
you cannot talk to them five minutes before you 
know their business, or their profession, and the 



*Vld Thoughts on Old Themes** 115 

sagacious and dexterous manner in which they 
manage the affairs of life. Wearied? Never. 
They could talk the bark off a tree. From their 
lips flows a stream of words as steady as water 
shoots up from a fountain. They remind us of 
the old rhyme of our school days : 

"From morning till night 
'Tis their constant delight 

To chatter and talk without stopping; 

Nor is there a day 

But they rattle away 

Like water that's constantly dropping.*' 

One would suppose that this was the only 
chance that characters of this kind ever had, and 
that if they were compelled to bottle up the gas 
that is fermenting within it would surely ex- 
plode. And what seems to be the strangest 
feature of all is that these poor creatures are 
vain enough to suppose that their conversation is 
as pleasant and as agreeable to every one else 
as it is to themselves. There are braying men 
in the world as Vi^ell as braying beasts; for what 
is loud, incessant, senseless talking anything oth- 
er than braying? Of course, all professions have 
their incessant talkers; in fact, they are found in 
almost every department of life. The pettifogger 



116 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

will bluster and thunder for hours at a time on 
mere trifles, where a sensible use of fifteen min- 
utes would be more than sufficient to exhaust the 
entire subject. In cities men will gather in 
squads and will talk incessantly on matters con- 
cerning which they never read ten lines. The 
gossiping village band will dispose of more state 
questions during an afternoon or evening than 
an ingenious diplomatist could review in a life- 
time. And, oh, it is frightful to contemplate the 
ruin that even one evil, irreligious man, in city or 
town, is able to accomplish ! If such would only 
confine the noxious wares of their own unholy 
minds to themselves little would be lost! But 
no, they must peddle them of? on the otherwise 
good and well-disposed. Not content with hav- 
ing denuded their own temple of images they 
must go about and shatter the God of other 
people. If you ever run across one of this de- 
scription keep him at arm's length, if you prize 
your own soul and the souls of those under your 
care. Demosthenes, one of the most celebrated 
orators of antiquity, was wont to say that "as a 
vessel is known by its sound whether it be 
cracked or not, so men are proved by their talk 
whether they be wise or foolish." 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes*' 117 

Now, of this much we may rest assured; if we 
have an inordinate desire for talking just for 
talk's sake, to be arguing and dogmatizing sim- 
ply for the sake of gratifying our vanity, appear- 
ing odd, or to obtain the reputation of being con- 
sidered smart, if we are always the first in giving 
our views and expressing our opinion, we may 
depend upon it we will soon, to use a common 
phrase, "be played out." And although it is said 
that the American people submit to more hum- 
bugs than any other nation, still they are not 
slow in discovering a "pest," and once he or she 
is discovered his or her name is ever after asso- 
ciated with mental torture. 

There is another class of talkers who, while 
likewise free from any direct intention of doing 
wrong, are indeed the cause of a great deal of 
wrong. They resemble very much the terrible 
talkers in the amount of loquacity they possess, 
but in its dissemination generally choose as an 
object the sayings and doings of others rather 
than their own. These are of the frivolous, gos- 
siping kind, who, if not meddling in the affairs 
of others, and prying into their neighbors' houses 
to discover secrets and then spread them abroad, 
are at least continually engaged in a sort of fool- 



118 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

ish prattle regarding the most useless and trifling 
matters. 

There is a great deal of philosophy in the say- 
ing that every man has in his own life follies 
enough, in the performance of his duty deficien- 
cies enough, in his own mind trouble enough, 
without being curious after the affairs of others. 
And, in truth, a man who cannot mind his own 
business is not fit to be entrusted with the busi- 
ness of another; for the busybody, like the tail 
of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is 
enough to set the whole field of the world aflame. 

It may be true that all are not saints that are 
talked about; but it is certain that they are not 
all saints either who do the talking. The scan- 
dal-lovers of society, who seek to discover hu- 
man faults, not to cure them, but to tell them to 
the world, are blacker than the victims of their 
malicious sport. It is well to think twice before 
you believe every story you hear, and twenty 
times before you repeat it. We all know that 
people sometimes tell falsehoods, that they often 
make mistakes; and that they sometimes hear 
wrong, especially if they are a little deaf. There 
is auricular illusion, as well as optical illusion. 
Take all these things into consideration, then, 



"Old Thoughts on Old Thanes" 119 

before you believe. As for repeating what you 
have heard, candidly ask yourself if it is neces- 
sary. If it is so, then do it with the remembrance 
of the Golden Rule before you. Give the help- 
ing hand, not the downward push. It was cap- 
ital advice, which a good mother once gave her 
child: ^*My child,'' said she, **if you ever hear 
anything foul in the street leave it in the gutter, 
do not bring it into the house." 

The art of not hearing everything, as well as of 
not repeating everything we do hear, is an art 
that should be more generally learned. There 
are so many things which it is painful to hear; 
very many, which, if heard, will disturb the tem- 
per, corrupt simplicity and modesty, and detract 
from contentment and happiness. If a man falls 
into a violent passion and calls us all manner of 
names, at the first word we should shut our ears 
and hear no more. If in a quiet voyage of life 
we find ourselves caught in one of those domestic 
whirlwinds of scolding so common in many fam- 
ilies, we should shut our ears, as the sailor would 
furl his sail, and, making all tight, scud before 
the gale. It is not worth while, if you really look 
into it, to hear what your neighbors say about 
your children, what your rivals say about your 



120 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes*' 

business, or what the young miss, that probably 
does not Hke you, and feels that she is just as 
good as you are, says about the hang of your 
new dress or the style of your best hat. If all 
the petty things said about one by heedless or 
ill-natured idlers were brought home to him he 
would become a mere walking pincushion, stuck 
full of sharp remarks. 

The terrible talkers and the gossipers are, 
however, much less to be dreaded than those 
who knowingly and wilfully abuse the gift of 
speech, and glory in the evil that their malicious 
talk effects. These people are never happier 
than when they see the most tender feelings of 
another pierced to the heart by a cold-blooded 
slash of their merciless tongues. With what com- 
plete satisfaction do they witness the shame and 
confusion they have brought upon another by 
exposing his faults and misdoings! 

What a victory they have won when by their 
deceitful talk they have succeeded in destroying 
the love of the nearest and dearest! In others, 
of course, they see no good, and they are al- 
ways ready and skillful enough to give to all the 
actions of others an appearance of guilt. If their 
neighbor is a God-fearing and conscientious man, 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'* 121 

they call him weak-minded and silly. If he is 
faithful in his attendance at Holy Mass, and 
regular in approaching the Sacraments, they say 
he is scrupulous and over-pious. 

With this class of people no one's reputation is 
safe, no friendship is secure, no apology ample. 
They are always on the alert to hear tales, scan- 
dals and rumors, which they rehearse to every 
one else and scatter broadcast all over the coun- 
try, and, if any one speaks unkindly of another, 
though what is said may be very trivial, or in 
jest, they cannot rest till they have informed the 
offended party, without explaining the circum- 
stances or allowing the offender any chance of 
exculpation. Indeed, they not infrequently ad- 
vance even farther still and employ their tongues 
in the vilest, most despicable and most abusive 
kind of calumny and detraction. They handle 
the double-edge sword of slander with a fiendish 
skill, that is truly surprising; backbiting, defam- 
ing, falsehood and deceit form the most agree- 
able pastime of their vicious lives. 

Says the immortal Shakespeare: 

"Good name in man and woman 
Is the immediate jewel of their souls/' 



122 'Vld Thoughts en Old Themes'' 

"Who steals my purse steals trash, 
But he that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
And makes me poor indeed." 

The low insinuations uttered against a person's 
character, which everybody will repeat but which 
nobody will own, are generally born of envy and 
jealousy and are best answered by taking no no- 
tice of them. 

To attempt to find the author of a false story is 
an undertaking which promises no satisfaction; 
for he who will lie to another will most assuredly 
lie to save himself. 

It is related of St. Philip Neri that, on one 
occasion a woman who was much given to slan- 
der came to him for advice and correction. The 
saint, with characteristic practicability, bade her 
go to market, get a chicken that had just been 
killed, and bring it to him, plucking the feathers 
as she came along. The woman did as she was 
directed, and returned, eager to learn the mean- 
ing of this strange injunction. '^Now," said St. 
Philip, "retrace your steps, and gather up again, 
one by one, all the feathers you have scattered 
and bring them to me." **Alas!'' replied the 
woman, **this I cannot do. I cast the feathers 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 123 

carelessly away and the wind has carried them in 
all directions." "Well, my friend," said St. Phil- 
ip, "so it is with slanders. Like the feathers 
which have been scattered, they have been waft- 
ed in many directions. Call them back now if 
you can.'' 

These, then, are some of the talkers that fill 
us with real terror whenever we think of them, 
and whose company and conversation should be 
avoided and despised by all. And in which class 
of these talkers, may I ask, do you recognize 
your individual selves? Are you a terrible talk- 
er, are you a gossiper, or, worst of all, are you a 
malicious talker? Let your own hearts answer. 
You will never err in speech if five things you 
observe with care, — of whom you speak, to 
whom you speak, and how, and when, and where. 
Besides this, forget not that the first and most 
important requisite to speak well is to consider 
beforehand what you have to say. "This lesson 
is taught us by nature itself, which has so ordered 
that our ears should be always open and ready to 
receive every sound, but has wisely placed our 
lips as a double barrier for the defense of our 
tongue. By this she teaches us to be forward 
and ready in hearing, but very moderate and re- 



124 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

served in speaking;'' according to the advice of 
St. James, "let every one be quick to hear, but 
slow to speak/' The anatomy and structure of 
the tongue teach us the same thing. It is loose, 
as you must have observed, at one end and can 
swing either way, but it is fastened at the other 
end to the floor of the mouth, and this makes us 
responsible for the way it wags. It has, more- 
over, two veins or branches in it, one of which 
gees to the heart, the source of all our passions, 
and the other mounts to the brain, the seat of 
reason, in order to show us that our words should 
come from the heart and be regulated by rea- 
son.* Hence the devout King David, in order 
that he might be able to discern the proper time 
both to speak and to be silent, prayed thus: 
"Place, O Lord, a guard upon my mouth and 
shut up my lips with a door." And Solomon, 
the wisest of men, following his royal father's 
steps, petitioned heaven for the self-same favor 
in similar words : "Who will give a guard to my 
mouth and set the seal of prudence upon my lips, 
that I may never offend by them, nor be ruined 
by my tongue." 



* Rodriguez — Christian Perfection. 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 125 

"St. Cyprian says that as a temperate man 
does not swallow his meat before he has chewed 
it well, so a prudent man never utters a word 
which he has not beforehand nicely weighed in 
his heart, knowing that rash and inconsiderate 
language is often the occasion of quarrel and dis- 
sension. Another saint advises us to be as long 
in bringing a word out of our mouths as we are 
in taking money out of our purse to discharge a 
debt. How slow and dull we are in opening our 
purse? How often do we consider whether the 
debt be due and how much money it comes to? 
Use the same caution in opening your mouth; 
consider whether you ought to speak at all, and 
in what manner, and then you will be sure to 
overshoot yourself no more in speaking than you 
would in paying more than is due to your cred- 
itors."* 

In truth, there are so many circumstances to 
be observed, so many conditions requisite to 
speak well, that it would be a wonder not to fail 
in some of them. For this reason silence is the 
securest harbor in which we can take shelter. It 
protects us from all the inconveniences and dan- 



* Rodriguez, 



126 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

gers to which our words expose us. **He who 
is cautious and careful in his words frees his soul 
from many afflictions/* says the wise man. Prov. 
xxi:23. And an ancient father assures us that 
wheresoever we live, if we keep silence and are 
sparing of our words we shall live in peace. 

*'Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice,'* 
was Hamlet's advice to the players. And the old 
Latin proverb, "Audi multa, loquere pauca,'' 
"hear much, but speak little," is an excellent 
maxim to follow. We all applaud that frequent 
saying of Arsenius: "I have often repented to 
have spoken, but never to have held my peace." 

"Looking around on the noisy inanity of the 
world, words with little meaning, actions with 
little worth, it is refreshing to think on the great 
empire of silence; the noble, silent men, scattered 
here and there, each in his own department, si- 
lently thinking, silently working, men of whom 
the daily newspapers never make mention." — 
Carlyle, 

They are the strong ones of the earth — those 
w^ho know how to keep silence when it is a grief 
to them; who know how to be silent even when 
they are in the right; who give their own souls 
time to wax strong against temptation. Silence 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thmes'' 127 

is the element in which great things fashion 
themselves together; and as the deepest hfe of 
nature is silent and obscure, so, often, the ele- 
ments that move and mould society are the re- 
sults of a sister's counsel and a mother's prayer. 
Silence is like nightfall — objects are lost in it, 
insensibly. It is the temple of our purest 
thoughts; the mirror of our most intimate self- 
knowledge; the language of eternity. It covers 
folly; keeps secrets; avoids disputes, and pre- 
vents sin. 

I. 

^'So keep a watch on your words, 

For words are wonderful things. 
They are sweet like the bee's fresh honey, 

Like the bees they have terrible stings. 

II. 

They can bless like the warm, glad sunshine, 

And brighten a lonely life; 
They can cut in the strife of anger, 

Like an open, two-edged knife. 

in. 

Let them pass through your lips unchallenged 

If their errand be true and kind. 
If they come to support the weary, 

To comfort and help the blind. 



128 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

IV. 

If a bitter, revengeful spirit 

Prompts the words, let them be unsaid; 
They may flash through a brain like lightning, 

Or fall on a heart like lead. 
V. 

Keep them back, if they're cold and cruel. 

Under lock and bar and seal; 
The wounds they make, remember, 

Are always slow to heal. 

VI. 

May peace guard your lives, 

And ever, from earliest youth, 
May the words you daily utter 

Be the beautiful words of truth." — Anon, 



The Catholic Church 

And Her Children. 



''No zveapon that is formed against thee shall 
prosper; and every tongue that resisteth thee in 
judgment, thou shalt condemn," — Isaias LIV: 17, 

''And I say to thee: That thou art Peter, and 
upon this rock I will build my Church, and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it" — 5"^. 
Matt. XVI: 18. 

"And other sheep I have that are not of this 
fold: them also I must bring: and they shall hear 
my voice: and there shall be made one fold and 
one shepherd" — St. John X: 16. 

"The chief reason why I continued to live so 
long in the errors of the Manichaeans, and im- 
pugned the Catholic Church with so much 
violence, was because I thought that all I had 
heard against the Church zvas true." — St. 
Augustine. 



"When I remember the many doubts and mis- 
givings which I felt when I was a Protestant, and 
the many fears with zvhich I shrank from join- 
ing myself to a system which I had believed to 
be corrupt and horrible, and zvhen I compare 
these feelings zvith the certainty, and peace, and 
blessedness which I have found since I had grace 
to make the z'enttire,itseems'to me as if the change 
which I have made can be compared only to the 
happy death of the just, from which in years gone 
by they, perhaps, shrank zvith dread, and hardly 
dared to look forzvard to; but to zvhich they for- 
ever look back, as to a nezv birth, into a state 
blessed beyond all that the heart of man can 
conceive" — Monsignor G. H. Doane. 



VII. 

At the time of the American Revolution the 
total population of this country was three million. 
Of this number from thirty to forty thousand, or 
one per cent, was Catholic. To-day the Cath- 
olics number ten million one hundred and twen- 
ty-nine thousand six hundred and seventy-seven, 
in a population of sixty-five million, or about one- 
sixth of the whole number. 

In the vast territory owned by the United 
States in the year 1789 there was one bishop 
and about thirty priests. To-day there are four- 
teen archbishops, seventy-seven bishops, eleven 
thousand six hundred and thirty-six priests, and 
ten thousand three hundred and thirty-nine 
churches, where at that date there were only ten. 

We have one hundred and seventy-eight col- 
leges and six hundred and sixty-two academies 
for the higher education of the youth of both 
sexes. Three thousand eight hundred and eleven 
parochial schools, two hundred and fifty-one or- 
phan asylums, and eight hundred and twenty- 

131 



132 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

seven charitable institutions where every form of 
misery that flesh is heir to is cared for and alle- 
viated. 

The sincere and earnest Catholic has every 
reason to rejoice in the growth of the Church 
in the United States. It is a growth that he may 
well be proud of, but it should not surprise him. 
The progress of his religion can never exceed 
his ambition, his aspirations, or his belief in the 
omnipotent power of God to protect and extend 
"the faith once delivered to the saints." 

The Catholic Church in America has arisen as 
silently as the Temple of Solomon, and it remains 
for us and for future generations to see that it 
continues, like that Temple, an evidence of the 
beauty, and truth, and worship of God in His 
Church unto the end. 

Keeping in mind, then, these encouraging 
figures, and knowing, as we must, that the cir- 
cumstances of the times and the developments of 
the age are directing the attention of all fair- 
minded men to the standing and progress of the 
Catholic Church on these shores, let us proceed 
on our way to gain a few ideas suggestive of 
what this Church is and what her faithful chil- 
dren should be. In the year 1859, forty-two 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 133 

years ago, there died in England a man whose 
name was Thomas Babington Macaulay. He 
was a brilliant and erudite writer, and, in one of 
his references to the Catholic Church he pays 
her the following truthful and beautiful tribute: 
"There is not and there never was on this earth 
a work so well deserving of examination as the 
Roman Catholic Church. The history of that 
Church joins together the two great ages of hu- 
man civilization. No other institution is left 
standing which carries the mind back to the time 
when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pan- 
theon, and when camelopards and tigers bound- 
ed in the Flavian Amphitheatre. The proudest 
royal houses are but of yesterday when compared 
with the long line of the Supreme Pontiffs.'' 
(It is said of Macaulay that he had a most extra- 
ordinary memory. He could repeat with fluency 
and ease the longest and most complicated lines 
of sovereigns and rulers. But he confessed he 
could never commit to memory the long list of 
the popes ; and so, after several fruitless attempts, 
he gave up in despair.) "That line we trace back, 
in an unbroken series, from the Pontiff who 
crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to 
the Pontiff who crowned Pepin in the eighth. 



134 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

The Republic of Venice came next in antiquity. 
But the Republic of Venice was modern when 
compared with the papacy; and the Republic of 
Venice is gone and the papacy remains. The 
papacy remains, not in decay, not as a mere an- 
tique, but full of life and youthful vigor. The 
Catholic Church is still sending forth to the far- 
thest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as 
those that landed in Kent with Augustine, and is 
still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit 
with which she confronted Attila. Her spiritual 
ascendency extends over the vast countries that 
lie between the plains of Missouri and Cape 
Horn — countries which a century hence may not 
improbably contain a population as large as that 
which now inhabits Europe. Xor do we see any 
sign that the term of her long dominion is ap- 
proaching. She saw the commencement of all 
the governments and of all the ecclesiastical es- 
tablishments that now exist in the world; and we 
feel no assurance that she is not destined to see 
the end of them all. She was great and respected 
before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before 
the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian 
eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols 
were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca; 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 135 

and she may still exist in undiminished splendor 
when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in 
the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a 
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
ruins of St. Paurs." 

"The Catholic Church,'' I quote from Dr. 
Brownson, **is no creation of the imagination. 
She is no mere accident in human history, in 
Divine Providence, in divine grace, in the con- 
version of souls. She is a glorious, a living real- 
ity. And God, in establishing His Church from 
the foundation of the world, in giving His life on 
the Cross for her, in abiding always with her in 
her tabernacles unto the consummation of time, 
in denominating her His spouse. His beloved, 
has taught us how He regards her; how deep and 
tender, how infinite and inexhaustible is His love 
for her, and with what love and honor we also 
should behold her." 

To advance arguments in favor of the claims of 
Catholicity, or dwell at length on any one topic 
in connection with so extensive a subject, is not 
my purpose at present. Christ's Church, we 
know, needs no apology or defense. He Himself 
has said that it would survive all attacks, and He 
Himself has likewise promised to be with her all 



136 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

days, even to the consummation of the world. 
We are assured beyond the possibility of a doubt 
that the author of our holy religion is none other 
than the immutable God Himself, and conse- 
quently that her origin is divine ; and, this given, 
her heavenly mission and the truths she teaches 
are as fixed in our minds as are the eternal truths 
of geometry. We know, moreover, that our faith 
is sustained by a logical power and a scriptural 
proof that cannot be fairly met and confuted. 
It is sustained by every plain and luminous prin- 
ciple upon which society and government are 
founded. Our reason, our common sense, the 
best feelings of our nature, the holiest impulses 
of our hearts, all satisfy us, beyond the possibil- 
it)' of a doubt that we are in the right. We look 
back over the pages of past history, and we as- 
cend by a plain, visible and unbroken chain to 
the apostolic day. We have no chasms to leap, 
no deserts to cross. At every step in this prog- 
ress we find the same old Church, the same faith, 
the same worship still pre-eminent in the Chris- 
tian world. We behold the rise and fall of em- 
pires and sects ; but the same old Church always 
pre-eminent ; the records of the past are with us. 
"Time writes no wrinkles on her azure brow," 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 137 

but rather tells for her a glorious story. All 
along the slumbering ages we meet with myri- 
ads of our brethren. The old apostles, the noble 
and the true, the holy and the just, the despised 
and persecuted, they, too, are our brethren. 

And she, the humblest of the humble, the pur- 
est of the pure, **our tainted nature's solitary 
boast," the stainless mother of our Lord, whom 
all generations call '^Blessed," is revered and 
loved by us as the noblest of creatures. 

We shake hands with the brethren of every 
kind, and name, and tongue, and join our prayers 
with those who speak the varied languages of the 
earth; on every shore, in every land, beneath ev- 
ery sky, and in every city, we meet our brethren 
of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. 
We are at home everywhere, and we bow down 
with the millions who have worshipped and who 
still worship at the same altar and hold the same 
faith. Matthew Arnold, a distinguished non- 
Catholic English critic, speaks thus: "Because 
of the rich treasures of human life that have been 
stored within her pale, the man of imagination 
and the philosopher too v/ill always have a weak- 
ness for the Catholic Church. Who, in fact, has 



138 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

seen the poor in the churches of other denomina- 
tions as they are seen in our CathoHc churches? 

The CathoHc Church has enveloped human 
life; and Catholics in general feel themselves to 
have drawn not only their religion from the 
Church, but to have drawn from her likewise 
their art, and poetry, and culture. If there is 
any one thing especially alien to religion it is 
divisions. If there is anything especially native 
to it, it is peace and union. Hence original at- 
traction towards unity in Rome, and hence the 
great charm and power of man's mind for that 
unity when once attained. In the Roman Cath- 
olic Church of the sixteenth century, when Mar- 
tin Luther went out from her, this great requisite 
of Christianity was found, and it is found in the 
Roman Catholic Church of to-day as well. 

I persist, therefore, in thinking that Catholi- 
cism has, from this superiority, a great future 
before it; that it will endure while all the Prot- 
estant sects dissolve and perish." 

The various sects of Christendom admit, as we 
all know, that Christ established a Church for the 
purpose of guarding and transmitting His holy 
faith. But where is that Church that Christ es- 
tablished as the "pillar and ground of truth?" 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 139 

Surely it is not the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
for this dates its commencement only from the 
sixteenth century, whereas the Church of Christ 
is coeval with the apostolic age. It is, indeed,, 
pretended that the reformers merely rejected the 
errors that had been introduced into the Church; 
but, in this case, it is plain that either St. Paul 
and Christ Himself were deceived when they pro- 
nounced the Church to be the pillar and ground 
of truth, and unwavering in its faith till the end 
of time, or the Protestant Church is in error. 

Now Protestants, as we all know, are so named 
because they protested against the so-called er- 
rors of the Church of Rome, which, they say, had 
deviated from the primitive Church, — errors un- 
known to the first four ages of Christianity. 

They admit, therefore. 

First, that the true Church must come in right 
succession from the apostles. 

Secondly, that the Roman Catholic Church 
was in the first ages the true Church. 

Thirdly, that the Protestant Church comes di- 
rectly from the Roman Catholic Church. 

If, then, Protestants acknowledge their succes- 
sion from the Roman Catholic Church, a fact 
which they cannot deny, they must confess that if 



140 "Old Thoughts on Old Thefues" 

this Church had erred for the space of eleven 
centuries it could not be the Church of Jesus 
Christ, and their very succession proves a viti- 
ated origin, and, of course, a false establishment. 
If, on the contrary, the Roman Catholic Church 
was the true Church, it could never err, and the 
reformation of its doctrine was both useless and 
impious. All Christians, therefore, admit that 
Jesus Christ established a Church, and that He 
promised to be with it, guiding it in the way of 
holiness and truth all days, till the consummation 
of ages. Consequently, the true Church must be 
as ancient as Christianity itself. 

New establishments cannot pretend to this 
privilege. If to obtain it they claim succession 
from another Church, our last word must be this: 

The Church you proceed from was either true 
or false. If true, you were wrong to change her 
doctrine; if false, you are false yourselves.* Ig- 
norance, bigotry and error cast upon us many a 
slur. We are frequently called to order for burn- 
ing candles in the daytime, and they say that the 
vestments of our ministers are antiquated and 
cut of style. We are often told that we are un- 



These arguments are adapted from the "Life of Mrs. E. A. 

Seatoa. 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thanes" Ul 

able to cope with modern appliances and the me- 
chanical progress of this go-ahead nineteenth 
century. But, far from hiding our head like the 
ostrich in the sand at the approach of these in- 
ventions, we hail them as messengers of the Most 
High, and we use them as Providential instru- 
m.ents for the furtherance of the gospel of truth. 
If we succeeded so well when we had no ships 
but frail canoes, no compass but our eyes, when 
wc had no roads but eternal snows, virgin forests, 
and trackless deserts, and no guides but faith and 
hope and God — if, even then, we succeeded so 
well in carrying the gospel of peace to the ends 
of the earth, how much more can we do now by 
the aid of the telegraph and the telephone, the 
steamship and the railroad? And yet change- 
ableness, as all cannot fail to observe, is not a 
very striking feature of the Catholic Church. She 
is, and always has been, most persistently con- 
servative. "Absolutely changeless in her moral 
and doctrinal teaching, which is the same for 
every age and for every tribe, and tongue, and 
nation under the broad canopy of heaven, she 
manifests an almost invincible reluctance to 
change even in mere m.atters of discipline and rit- 
ual. This reluctance to change has brought upon 



142 'Vld Thoughts on Old Thenies" 

the Catholic Church the hatred and contempt of 
many to whose thinking change and progress are 
identical notions, convertible terms, precisely 
similar facts. Nevertheless, supremely regard- 
less of the sneers of some and the aggressive vio- 
lence of others, old Mother Church calmly pur- 
sues the even tenor of her way, making no 
changes save such as are purely accidental, and 
m.aking even these not so much to suit the times 
as to suit her own queenly self. And somehow 
or other, as even our adversaries must admit, the 
Catholic Church does seem to get along very well 
indeed. It is many a long day now since she 
first began to sail the sea of time, yet her paint is 
just as bright, and her timbers just as strong as 
when first the Master launched her nineteen cen- 
turies ago. Though not at all a product of this 
age of steam, she has all the characteristics of the 
steamship: steadily does she pursue her majes- 
tic way, calmly does she hold to the course 
marked out for her, do others as they list. When 
the tempest is blowing from ahead she plunges 
through it; when the billows are too high to 
mount she stoops a little, while they roll harm- 
lessly over with no more dire result than to clear 
her decks of the useless litter with which they 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes*' 143 

are sometimes unavoidably encumbered. And 
so has she been going on for ages, and so shall 
she continue to go on until the ages will have 
ceased to be, an irresistible, immutable type of 
that immutable Being by Whom she was made, 
and Who controls her bright and glorious des- 
tiny.* What a rich and priceless heritage is the 
heritage of the genuine Catholic Christian! 
What a grand and exalted privilege is not the 
grace of being a child — a faithful child — of the 
one, only, true and saving faith! But, alas! many 
a man for a temporal preferment, and many a 
woman for the sake of an auspicious alliance, yea, 
for lesser trifles than these, have ungratefully 
turned their backs on the chaste mother on 
w^hose bosom they were nestled. Nor need we 
advance yery far in search for proof of tliis sad 
assertion. Perhaps examples lie within the circle 
of your own acquaintance, nay, perhaps within 
the limits of your own little parish. I confess 
that it pains me beyond expression, as it certain- 
ly should every loyal child of Mother Church, 
when I look about me from day to day and see 
the men and women whose ancestors, if not they, 

* Anon, 



144 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

were born and bred in the island of saints, so cold 
and callous to their own best and truest interests. 
The Catholic Church, remember, has need of 
none of us individually. She ovv^es nothing to 
her children, but her children owe much, and 
very much, to her. Here and there a disobedi- 
ent and rebellious child may drop out of her 
ranks, or, listening to the enticements of vanity 
or folly, take up other issues. The loss is his. 
The vacant place will be filled. The ranks will be 
closed up again, and her good work will continue 
to go on as of yore. In truth, we must all adm.it, 
with the Rev. L. A. Lambert, that "we cannot 
understand the logic of renouncing the Catholic 
Church and stopping anywhere short of Atheism, 
of a denial of the supernatural, or of absolute 
scepticism. Once start on the inclined plane and 
there is no logical resting place till the gloomy 
depths are reached. Before these ultimate re- 
sults Vv^e stand aghast, and shrink, as one shrinks 
w^ho stands on a bottomless precipice. It is fear- 
ful, a dreadful thing, to lose the faith, and those 
who grow careless and indifferent with regard to 
it finish by abandoning it altogether; and those 
who do forsake it never give their real reasons. 
There is always a dark m3^stery back of the act, 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 145 

known only to the unfortunate soul itself, and 
which the pervert never has the courage to dis- 
close/' 

We occasionally hear those who throw up the 
practice of their religion, or, worse, abandon it 
altogether, allege in justification of their con- 
duct the fact that bickerings and quarrels some- 
times occur in the Church. This is true, as it 
must be of every institution that has a human 
element in it, and as it always will be as long 
as man has liberty and ambition and passions. 
But would you seek the darkness because the 
sun shines on sinners? If you want to avoid 
quarrels and bickerings altogether you must 
search for that lodge in some vast wilderness, 
foi which the poet Cowper longed, where rumor 
of oppression and deceit might never reach him 
more." Or go to the moon, or to some other 
place where human nature is not. This attribut- 
ing to the Church the delinquencies of men is 
like attributing to the law the crimes of the law- 
breaker. — Id. Again, we find among this class 
those who sometimes offer in extenuation of their 
conduct the treatment of which they have been 
the object, or the mistakes, perhaps, or even 
possible fall, of some particular priest. But we 



U6 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

must always remember that our faith does not 
rest on the standing of any individual priest, and 
that we should never waver because such or such 
a one does not happen to come up to our ideal in 
this or that particular. A priest must work out 
his salvation just like any other man. He needs 
help and assistance just as other men do. He 
must watch and pray, he must bend his knees in 
confession, he must mortify his passions and 
bring them into subjection to the spirit just as 
other men, and just as other men, undoubtedly, 
must he answer before the great God for his fail- 
ings, imperfections and falls. "He, like the 
humblest of his flock, m.ust cling to the Church 
with the eager grasp of the infant on its mother's 
breast, knowing that the Church is the appointed 
source of spiritual life, as the mother is of phys- 
ical life, and that through her come grace, and 
truth, and the merits of our blessed Redeemer." 
—Id. 

One thing, however, remains gloriously and 
unquestionably true: You never yet heard of a 
staunch and genuine Catholic when lying on his 
bed of death regretting that he lived as such, or 
asking at death's dark hour to change his belief 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 147 

for a religion other than that in which he was 
born and bred. Oh, no — 

"When all the blandishments of life are gone, 
When tired dissimulation drops her mask, 
And real and apparent are the same," 

When eternity with all its mighty conse- 
quences rolls up its endless proportions before 
the dying vision — ah, then no Catholic asks to 
change his faith. Oh give me the last Sacra- 
ments of the Church! Let me die in her holy 
communion! Let me be buried in consecrated 
ground! Let my brethren pray for me! 

I have said that the Catholic Church needs no 
apology or defense. The fact that she has with- 
stood for nineteen hundred years persecutions 
without, and persecutions within, is one of the 
strongest proofs of her divine origin and super- 
natural protection. She is the only institution on 
earth that is impervious to the vicissitudes of 
time, and that has not been shattered by the icon- 
oclastic hand of man. The Ten cruel and bloody 
persecutions utterly failed to subdue her. The 
proud and haughty Caesars fell powerless at her 
approach. Her enemies in all times have felt in 
their souls that her origin, her mission and her 
teaching were divine. ^'Scoffers and mockers 



148 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

and false prophets — Pantheists, Materialists and 
Atheists — all, all the unfortunate children of er- 
ror may speak and write as they will, but the 
Roman Catholic Church, one, holy, catholic and 
apostolic, guided and protected by the spirit of 
Truth, blessed by the right hand of the God of all 
power and majesty, remains, and will ever re- 
main, undefiled, unchangeable, and ever victori- 
ous. Amidst the changes and crumbling of dy- 
nasties, the dismemberment of empires, and the 
destruction of nations, amidst the crush of matter 
and the wreck of worlds, her triumphant song of 
victory has never been hushed; the loud and 
solemn hymn of her exultant Te Deum has never 
been silenced/'* What wins for the Catholic 
Church more undying laurels throughout this 
wide, wide land than her homes for the homeless 
poor, her refuges for the wild and wayward, her 
asylums for the sick and the maimed, and last, 
though not, by far, the least, her countless beau- 
tiful churches with their heaven-pointed spires? 
Is there anything in this locality to-day better 
calculated to advance her interests, is there any- 
thing more likely to win for her the wonder and 
admiration of those who cross these plains, than 

* Conquests of Our Holy Faith— Preface— James J. Treacy. 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thefnes" 149 

this pretty little structure which the zeal and ex- 
quisite taste of your devoted pastor, coupled with 
your generous efforts, have so beautifully ad- 
orned? You, then, I have every reason to be- 
lieve, are loyal Catholic Christians, as true to 
your faith as the needle to the pole, and ready at 
all times, I am confident, like the great St. Ter- 
esa, to lay down your life for a single ceremony 
Oi the Church you love so well. The Catholic 
who lives in his faith to-day can defy the world. 
A greater appreciation of, and greater faith in, 
her work, increased loyalty one to the other, and 
the consequent extinction of the many petty 
jealousies and much-accursed narrowness that 
have made Catholics their own worst foes, will 
give greater prom.inence to our Holy Church in 
this free and glorious land of America. Go not 
hence then to-day without giving humble thanks 
to your Father in heaven for the faith that is in 
you, and every day you live heartily bless Him 
for the grace of Catholic Christianity. Yes, and 
ere you leave this edifice for your quiet homes, 
unite with all the fervor of loving hearts and say 
with me, if not in word at least in sentiment and 
thought : 

"All hail thou dear and ever blessed Church! 



150 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Thou immaculate spouse, thou universal queen, 
all hail ! Highly do we honor thee, for God hon- 
ors thee ; we obey thee, for thou ever command- 
est the will of thy Lord. The passers-by may 
jeer thee; the servants of the princes of this 
world may call thee black; the daughters of the 
uncircumcised may beat thee ; earth and hell rise 
up in wrath against thee and seek to despoil 
thee of thy rich ornaments and sully thy fair 
name; but all the more dear art thou to our 
hearts; all the more deep the homage we pay 
thee ; and all the more earnestly do we pray thee 
to own us for thy children and to watch over us, 
that we may never forfeit the right to call thee 
our Mother." — Dr. Brawnson. 



''Non Omnis Mortar' 

Not all of me shall die. 



^Who zvill grant me that my zvords may he 
written? Who will grant me that they may he 
marked dozvn in a hook zvith an iron pen, and in 
a plate of lead, or else he graven with an instru- 
ment in Uint'Stone? For I know that my Re- 
deemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out 
of the earth. And I shall he clothed again with 
my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God. 
Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall he- 
hold, and not another; this, my hope, is laid up in 
my bosom/' — }oh XIX: 23-28. 

'^Martha therefore said to Jesus: Lord, if thou 
hadst heen here my brother had not died. Jesus 
saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again. Martha 
saith to him: I know that he shall rise again in 
the resurrection at the last day. Jesus saith to 
her: I am the resurrection and the life ; he that 
helieveth in me although he be dead shall live, 
and every one that liveth and helieveth in me shall 
not die forever." — St. John XI: 21-27. 

^'There may he beings, thinking beings, near or 
surrounding us, zvhich we do not perceive, which 
zve cannot imagine. We know very little; hut, 
in my opinion, zve know enough to hope for the 
immortality, the individual immortality, of the 
better part of man/' — Sir Humphrey Davy. 

"Men do not believe in the next world as they 
do in London or Boston; they do not launch upon 
the ignotum mare zvith a shadow of that prophetic 
belief which girded up the heart of Columbus/' — 
James Russell Lozvell. 



VIII. 

**Non omnis moriar." 
Not all of me shall die. — Horace, 

Among the questions that were taught us in 
our childhood, which memory in spite of contrary 
efforts retains the best, and which oftenest come 
back to us in after life, are these: "What is 
man?" "Man is a creature composed of a body 
and soul and made to the image and likeness of 
God/' 

"In what is the soul like to God?" "The soul 
is like to God in being a spirit and immortal, and 
in being capable of knowing and loving Him." 

"What do you mean by saying that the soul is 
immortal?" "By saying that the soul is immortal 
I mean that it can never die." 

The Immortality of the Soul, then, is our 
theme for present consideration, and a most 
beautiful one it is to be sure. The soul, 
as we knov/, is that principle which forms 
our identity, and by Vv^hich we live and move 
and have our being. Our own experience 

153 



154 "Old Thcughfs on Old Themes'' 

teaches us that we have intellectual conceptions 
and operations of reason and judgment inde- 
pendent of our material organs. Our mind 
grasps what the senses cannot reach. We argue 
of God and His perfections ; we have thoughts of 
right and justice; we perceive the connection 
between statements and conclusions; we know 
the difference between good and evil. Such a 
principle being independent of matter in its op- 
erations, must needs be independent of matter in 
its existence. It is therefore, by its very nature, 
beyond the reach of material corruption; its be- 
ing is not, and cannot, be extinguished v/ith that 
of the body. It survives its frail tenement of 
clay, lives on long after the body has crumbled 
into dust. It must, therefore, be immortal. 

The first great proof that we have of the im- 
mortality of the soul is drawn from the intrinsic 
nature of the soul itself, which is so constituted 
that dissolution, as applied to it, is, at least phys- 
ically speaking, an impossibility. 

Who is there, in fact of right reason and sane 
mind, that feels not a repugnance for death? We 
shudder and recoil at the very notion of annihila- 
tion. There is within us a still small voice which 
tells us that this present life is not the end of 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 155 

all, but that there is another and a better world 
beyond the grave where the good shall live on in 
bliss forever. 

While there are a thousand reasons to prove 
the life hereafter, there is not a single one which 
proves that death ends all for us. "If we wholly 
perish with the body, if the soul is extinguished 
at the moment of death, whence then proceeds 
that desire of happiness which continually haunts 
, us? All our passions here below may be easily 
gratified; love, ambition, anger have their full 
measure of enjoyment ; the desire of happiness is 
the only one that cannot be satisfied and that 
fails even of an object, as we know not what that 
felicity is which we long for." — Genius of Chris- 
tianity. As one instance of this I will quote for 
you the words of one of the greatest musicians of 
modern times, the celebrated pianist, Herman. 
He was a Jew by birth, but became a Catholic, 
and in the year 1849 entered the Carmelite order, 
where he was known as Father Augustine of the 
Blessed Sacrament. He died in the year 1871, of 
small-pox, contracted while nursing some of the 
French prisoners in the Franco-Prussian war. 
''Happiness," says he, "how I have sought it! 
To find it I have traversed kingdoms and fur- 



156 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

rcwed seas. I have sought it in the poetic nights 
of an enchanting cHmate, on the Hmpid waters of 
Helvetian lakes; among the jagged peaks of lofty 
mountains, amid the grandest spectacles of na- 
ture. I have sought it in the refined society of 
drawing-rooms, in sumptuous feasts, in the giddy 
round of balls, and festive entertainments. I 
have sought it in the possession of gold, the ex- 
citement of plays, the gems of literature and in 
a life of adventure. I have sought it in artistic 
fame, in the intimacy of celebrated men, in every 
pleasure of mind and of sense. Alas! v/here have 
I not sought for happiness, and I found it not, but 
in Thee, O my God!'' 

"Our hearts, O Lord, were made for Thee, 

And restless must they be 
Until, O Lord, — this grace accord — 
Until they rest in Thee/' — SLAugustim. 

We all remember the verdict of Solomon, the 
wisest of men. Rich and powerful, and of un- 
bounded fame, he gave himself without reserve 
to the enjoyment of every pleasure. "I made 
me," he says, "great works. I built me houses 
and planted vineyards, and whatever my eyes de- 
sired I refused them not; and I saw in all things 
vanity and vexation of spirit and that nothing 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 157 

was lasting under the sun. Vanity of vanities, 
and all is vanity!" was the verdict uttered in the 
bitterness of his heart. 

It is the same with all who have had the op- 
portunity of putting it to the test. At a distance 
things look so delightful, so enticing and so de- 
sirable — but they are delusive. Like the apples 
that grow on the borders of the Dead Sea they 
are beautiful to behold, but when we touch them 
they burst and leave nothing but ashes in our 
hand. Look at Napoleon the First. After sever- 
al amazing campaigns, after conquering country 
after country, and laying a good part of Europe 
under his feet, was he satisfied? No. His suc- 
cesses merely whetted his appetite for other con- 
quests; so that in his insatiable ambition, trying 
to extend his power still further he lost all and 
died an exile and a prisoner on the bleak and 
rock-ribbed island of St. Helena. 

Alexander the Great is another example; for 
when he had conquered the entire known world, 
so far from being satisfied, he wept. Why? Be- 
cause there were no more worlds to conquer. 
"Anthony,'' says a learned writer, "sought for 
happiness in love; Brutus in glory, Caesar in do- 
minion. The first found disgrace ; the second dis- 



158 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

gust, the last ingratitude, and each destruction;" 
and so of all. In this world the heart is never at 
rest. Desires, longings and aspirations after the 
things that, are not are always distracting, and 
disturbing, and vexing it. 

If, as we all must admit, it is impossible to deny 
that man cherishes hopes to the very tomb, if it 
is certain that all earthly possessions, so far from 
satiating, our desires serve only to increase the 
void in the soul, we cannot but conclude that 
there must be a something beyond the limits of 
time. If God, who does nothing in vain but al- 
ways acts wisely and well, has conferred upon us 
faculties and capacities that can never be satis- 
fied nor fully exercised on the stage of this world, 
they must be destined for another sphere — for a 
life beyond the tomb. 

One other proof of the Immortality of the 
Soul, and one of the clearest witnesses to a future 
life, is found in that strange phenomenon which 
wc call conscience. In fact, there is scarcely any- 
thing so awfully strange and so essentially char- 
acteristic of man as this self-same phenomenon. 
What then is conscience? How shall we define 
it? "Conscience is that low, still, soft, inarticu- 
late voice speaking so clearly and distinctly with- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 159 

in our inmost being, and instructing us as to the 
moral worth of conduct. It is a judge which we 
cannot dislodge, seated upon the throne of our 
hearts, and -pronouncing sentence upon every act 
wt perform, and upon every duty we fulfill or 
refuse to fulfill. We cannot control it, we cannot 
bribe it, we cannot silence it. Though we may 
oppose and resist it, and petulantly disobey its in- 
junctions, it still continues to denounce and con- 
demn our evil conduct. 'This,' it says, 'is right, 
that is wrong. This is commanded, that is for- 
bidden.' Conscience makes cowards of us all. 
A man cannot steal but it accuses him; a man 
cannot swear but it checks him; a man cannot 
do a base act but it detects him. Whence comes 
this strange monitor? Who has stationed this 
secret sentinel at the door of our hearts? No 
other, surely, than the Author of our Being; and 
to what purpose, unless He intends to reward 
obedience and punish disobedience — not here, 
for we see that in this world the wicked often 
prosper, and the good are oppressed — then, if 
not here it must be hereafter." — Life After 
Death. Yes, each and every individual has 
within his own heart a tribunal, where he sits in 
judgment on himself, till the Supreme Arbiter 



160 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

shall confirm the sentence. If vice is but a phys- 
ical consequence of our organization, whence 
then arises the dread that embitters the days of 
prosperous guilt? Holy Scripture "assures us, 
and experience betters the instruction, that 
"there is no peace for the wicked." "The wicked 
man fleeth when no man pursueth." "The sound 
of dread is always in his ears," and "when there 
is peace he always suspecteth treason." 

"It must be so, — Plato, thou reasonest well! — 
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortahty? 
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 
Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
And intimates eternity to man." — Addison, 



''Non Omnis Mortar' 

Not all of me shall die. 



IX. 

Before passing on to our next argument for the 
Immortality of the Soul let me call your atten- 
tion to some startling facts which, doubtless, 
have more than once worried your minds, and 
which at the same time present us with one of 
the strongest proofs ot a life hereafter. 

All men, all peoples, all tribes and all tongues 
have always believed in some kind of an here- 
after, some future state, where the soul will 
live on forever, in reward or punishment for 
the actions of time. Go where we will, and 
seek where we will and as far back as we 
will, we shall invariably find that men have 
always uniformly believed in a state of existence 
after death. This conviction is so strong, and so 
universal, that we can only conclude that it is in- 
grained in man's very nature. Though some few 
individuals may question it, though an isolated 
person here and there may court notoriety by 
denying it, the broad fact remains that the voice 
of mankind proclaims it, and has ever proclaimed 
it, in most unmistakable terms. 

163 



164 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Now, no large number of people can ever be 
brought to believe in any doctrine which is con- 
trary to right reason, or to their own ease and 
happiness in this world. This universal belief 
in the Immortality of the Soul, and in a future 
state of existence, is the unbiased reason of man 
speaking with certainty on a subject of the very 
highest importance to each and every member 
of the human race. It must, therefore, be true 
and certain; for human reason cannot be deceived 
on such an important matter, given to us and 
created in us as it is, for the guidance of our ac- 
tions, by the God of nature. 

Although the writings of some of the ancient 
philosophers and learned men of antiquity rep- 
resent a vague uncertainty with regard to the 
Immortality of the Soul, still, to the credit of 
not a few of the sages of the olden times, and of 
Greece and Rome especially, it must be said that 
they conceived a more just and exalted idea of 
human nature. When they viewed with com- 
placency the extent of their own mental powers, 
when they exercised the various faculties of 
memory, of fancy and of judgment, in the most 
profound speculations, or the most important la- 
bors, which transported them into future ages 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 165 

far beyond the bounds of death and the grave, 
they were unwiUing to confound themselves with 
the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being 
for whose dignity they entertained the most sin- 
cere admiration could be limited to a spot of 
earth, or to a few years of duration. With this 
favorable conviction they summoned to their aid 
the science of metaphysics, by which they soon 
discovered that, as none of the properties of mat- 
ter will apply to the operations of the mind, the 
human soul must, consequently, be a substance 
distinct from the body — pure, simple, and spir- 
itual, incapable of dissolution and susceptible of a 
much higher degree of virtue and happiness after 
its release from its corporeal prison. 

One of the finest, if not the very finest, of 
passages in all the heathen authors, is that which 
is found in the Roman orator Cicero's treatise on 
"Old Age/' wherein he manifests his belief in the 
Immortality of the Soul, and in the recognition 
and reunion of friends after death. It is as fol- 
lows : 

"O glorious day, when I shall go to that divine 
assembly and company of spirits, and when I 
shall depart out of this bustle, this sink of cor- 
ruption! For I shall go, not only to those great 



166 'Vld Thoughts en Old Themes" 

men of whom I have before spoken, but also to 
my dear Cato (his son), than whom there never 
was a better man, or one more excellent in filial 
aflection; whose funeral rites were performed by 
me when the contrary was natural, namely, that 
mine should be performed by him. His soul, not 
desiring, but looking back on me, has departed 
into those regions v/here he saw that I myself 
must come; and I seem to bear firmly my afiflic- 
tion, not because I did not grieve for it, but be- 
cause I comforted myself, thinking that the sep- 
aration and parting between us would not be of 
long duration." 

This passage, v/ritten more than one hundred 
years before the Christian era, is, as I have said, 
one of the finest, if not the very finest, in all the 
heathen authors; and well it may, for the sen- 
timents it expresses awaken a responsive echo in 
every human heart. 

Edmund Burke, by far the most philosophical 
and imaginative of England's statesmen, who ad- 
mits that he modeled his character in eloquence, 
policy, and ethics on the great Roman orator, 
has likewise given expression to similar thoughts 
in that very pathetic account which he has left 
us of the untimely calling away of his dear son. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 167 

He says: "I live in an inverted order. They 
who ought to have succeeded me are gone before 
me; they who should have been to me as poster- 
ity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the 
dearest relation — which ever must subsist in 
memory — that act of piety which he would have 
performed to me. But a Disposer Whose power 
we are little liable to resist, and Whose wisdom it 
behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained 
it in another manner, and — whatever my queru- 
lous weakness might suggest — a far better." 

We are certain that morality is the foundation 
of all society; but if man is only a bag of 
bones, a mere mass of matter, there is in 
reality neither vice nor virtue, and, of course, 
morality is a mere sham. Our laws, which are 
ever relative and variable, cannot serve as the 
support of morals which are absolute and unal- 
terable; they must, therefore, rest on something 
more permanent than the present life and have 
better guarantees than uncertain rewards and 
transient punishments. But there is yet another 
and a stronger proof than all to assure us, beyond 
the possibility of a doubt, of the Immortality of 
the Soul, and of the unending duration of the 
life hereafter. God Himself has spoken. He 



168 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

who has said "heaven and earth shall pass away, 
but My words shall never pass away," declares it 
to be so, and who shall dare to question or deny 
the truth of His utterances! 

"Ego sum resurrectio et vita: qui credit in me, 
etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet: etomnis, qui vivit, 
et credit in me, non morietur in aeternum."— 
Jno. xi. 

As far back as Genesis, the first book of the 
Bible, a clear distinction is drawn between the 
body of man and his soul. "God formed man of 
the slime of the earth (this refers to the body), 
and breathed into his face the breath of life, and 
he became a living soul,'' which signifies his spir- 
itual and nobler part. Farther on in this same 
book we read that the patriarch Jacob, on being 
asked by King Pharo, "How many are the days 
of the years of thy life?" replied, "The days of 
my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty, few and 
evil, and they are not come up to the days of the 
pilgrimage of my fathers." Gen. xlvii:9. Now, 
it would be meaningless to speak of this life as a 
"pilgrimage" unless it were thought to lead 
somewhere; unless, in a word, it were the high 
road to some other form of existence. Again, 
the old Hebrews were accustomed to speak of 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'* 169 

their dead as being "gathered to their fathers" or 
"united to their people," which certainly does 
not convey the idea of annihilation. In the book 
of Ecclesiastes xii:5 we are told that "man shall 
go into the house of his eternity," and that "the 
dust shall return into its earth, from whence it 
was, and the spirit return to God Who gave it." 
"And all things that are done," continues the 
same writer, "God will bring into judgment for 
every error, whether it be good or evil.'' 

"The souls of the just," says the Book of Wis- 
dom, "are in the hands of God, and the torment 
of death shall not touch them. In the sight of 
the unwise they seemed to die, and their depart- 
ure was taken for misery; — but they are in 
peace, and their hope is full of immortality." — 
Wisdom iii:14.* 

Long centuries ago holy Job, that unequaled 
model of perfect patience and resignation, borne 
up by the hope of immortality, and locking down 
through the vista of futurity, burst forth into 
those admirable and consoling words, which have 
ever since been the hope and stay of all succeed- 
ing generations: "I know that my Redeemer 



* Life After Death. 



170 'Vld Thoughts en Old Themes'' 

liveth, and that on the last day I shall rise out 
of the earth and I shall be clothed again vvdth my 
skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God. This my 
hope is laid up in my bosom." This beautiful 
prophecy of the holy patriarch is amply confirmed 
by the words of our Blessed Redeemer— "All who 
are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God; and they who have done good shall come 
forth to the resurrection of life, but they that 
have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment. 

The body, says St. Paul, is sown in corruption, 
it shall rise in power; it is sown a natural body, 
it shall rise a spiritual body. For this corruptible 
shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall 
put on immortality. — I Cor. xv. 

Every one, says the gospel of St. Matthew, 
that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
father, or mother, or lands for My name's sake 
shall receive an hundred fold and shall possess 
life everlasting. — xix:29. Therefore a future and 
everlasting life exists. Again, the same evan- 
gelist informs us that Christ will judge the good 
and the wicked at the last day, and these, he says, 
"shall go into everlasting punishment, but the 
just into everlasting glory." When our Blessed 
Lord was asked by a certain ruler: "Master, 



*Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 171 

what shall I do to possess eternal life," the Sa- 
vior of the world did not deny a future existence, 
but told him how to merit it. And so I might go 
on, almost indefinitely, multiplying texts to show 
how unmistakably the doctrine of a future life is 
insisted upon and reiterated in the inspired writ- 
ings. The Church, which is the "pillar and ground 
of truth,'' has accepted these passages in their 
natural and literal interpretation, and never 
ceases to remind us of the endless joys of heaven 
on the one hand, and the interminable pains of 
hell on the other. Her teaching is, and always 
has been, and always will be, in strict accordance 
with reason and sound sense, and is strongly en- 
forced and strengthened by every appeal to his- 
tory or science. "In fact, this dogma of the Im- 
mortality of the Soul is so bound up with re- 
ligion, so woven into the whole fabric of human 
thought, motive and sympathy, that its destruc- 
tion would mean the destruction of our best- 
founded and most deeply-rooted convictions. As 
you cannot remove the mainspring of a musical 
box without arresting every musical sound, and 
as you cannot destroy the foundation of a house 
without bringing the whole building down upon 
your ears, so you cannot give up faith in a future 



172 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

life without at the same time renotmcing faith in 
all else that is worth believing. No, if there 
be no future life then there is no justice in God; 
and if God is not just then He is not God, and 
there is no such Being at all in existence. Fur- 
thermore, if there be no future life the words of 
Christ are false, the Incarnation is a fraud, the 
Sacraments are the silly inventions of men, the 
Church and its marvellous duration, unity, holi- 
ness, and catholicity are without any adequate 
explanation, and the only wise are they who 
make the most of this world, who live for pleas- 
ures, enjoyment, the pampering of their flesh, 
and the indulgence of their lusts. Once be- 
lieve the grewsome doctrine of annihilation, once 
deny a future life, and suicide will become the 
most rational and sensible course. Why, in fact, 
should any man live one hour longer than he de- 
sires if there be nothing to follow after death? 
Why should he endure pain, and sorrow, and toil, 
and weariness, and poverty, and want, and dis- 
ease, and all the rest, when he can escape them 
forever in the corruption of the grave? When 
there is nothing left to live for, when the orange 
of life has been sucked to the last drop, then 
reason might justly countenance self-destruction, 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 173 

and court the total oblivion that death would be 
supposed to bring. To deny immortality is to 
turn sceptic, and to cast off all that is best, and 
greatest and noblest in human life. It is to con- 
fess that man is not only no better than the beast, 
but infinitely worse. "If in this life only," writes 
the great St. Paul, "we have hope in Christ, we 
are of all men the most miserable." And well 
might it be added that we should be more miser- 
able not merely than all men, but more miser- 
able even than all beasts, for they, at least, are 
incapable of realizing what death is, and have no 
kind of knowledge of the extinction that awaits 
them. 

Their natural and earthly happiness is not dis- 
turbed by the prickings of an uneasy conscience; 
they are not harassed by the gloomy forebodings 
of a future judgment; they have no experience 
of the anxieties, and cares, and responsibilities of 
human life, nor do they even suspect the thou- 
sand and one sources of affliction, disappoint- 
ment and sorrow which spread their stinging 
waters like an inundation over the human heart, 
till often it would fain break and beat no more. 
No, the dogma of the Immortality of the Soul 
rests upon too many and too solid arguments to 



174 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'* 

be called in question, and must needs be accepted 
by all reasonable and prudent men. From the 
Latin bard who sang "Non omnis moriar/' "Not 
all of me shall die," to the plaintive note of the 
late poet laureate : 

My own dim life should teach me this, 
That life shall live for evermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core. 

And dust and ashes all that is. — Tennyson, 

All noble minds have turned at times to that 
momentous question, and tried to pierce the im- 
penetrable gloom that crowds us round and 
makes of life but a dreary vale between the un- 
discovered peaks of two eternities. Revelation 
confirms the conclusion reached by Reason, Con- 
science adds its sanction to both, and, under their 
influence, grim death itself becomes a blessed 
consummation.* Oh, what a beautiful and con- 
soling belief is not the belief of the Immortality 
of the Soul! In youth, in health, in prosperity, it 
awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, 
and purifies at the same time that it exalts. But 
it is in misfortune, in sickness, and above all, 
when we are gliding into the solitary haven of old 



♦ Life After Deatli. 



''Old Thoughts on Old Thrme/' 175 

age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially 
felt. What a halo of holy peace it throws around 
the memories of those from whom death has sep- 
arated us for a time! What a blessed influence it 
v/ields over the life of the good and fervent Cath- 
olic, through all the days, till the dawn of that 
happy one that breaks the chain and calls from 
exile home! 

How cruel and hard-hearted are they v/ho, by 
raising doubts of an hereafter, would deprive us 
of the best and fondest aspirations of our nature. 
The realization that life is gliding swiftly away, 
and that death is ever hurrying on apace is pain- 
ful, it is true, and to some terrible; but, to lie 
down and die, and be no more forever! Time 
never was when man wished for such an end, nor 
has the man ever lived that did not in his heart 
promise himself something better. Reason, rev- 
elation, conscience, the monuments of the na- 
tions, the best and holiest impulses of our nature, 
are all protests against nothingness after death. 
Miserable, and to be pitied, indeed, are they who 
have no faith. Without faith there can be no 
hope, and without hope what is life but a gloomy 
storehouse of disquieting mysteries! What is 
<leath but an insolvable riddle! 



176 *Vld Thoughts on Old Thelites'' 

Oh, blessed and praised for evermore be God, 
Who has given us to see that old, old belief of 
Immortality; and may He and His ever blessed 
mother, and all the dear ones who have gone be- 
fore us with the light of faith and hope, stand by 
us, to aid us to see it, in all its blissful reality, 
when the dark shadows of the grave are gather- 
ing round us, and the grim angel of death bears 
us onward to the ocean! 



The Cross, 



"And going out they found a man of Cyrene, 
named Simon: him they forced to take up his 
cross/'— Matt, XXVII: 32. 

''If any man will come after me, lei him deny 
himself y and take up his cross, and follow me/' — 
St, Matt. XVI: 24, 

''He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross/' — Phil, II: 8. 

"All crosses become light when I consider the 
reward that I expect/' — St. Francis of Assisi 



RABBONL 

*'When I am dying, how glad I shall be 
That the lamp of my life has been burned out 

for Thee. 
That sorrozv has darkened the path that I trod; 
That thorns, and not roses, were strewn o'er the 

sod; 
That anguish of spirit full often zvas mine. 
Since anguish of spirit so often was thine. 
My cherished Rabboni, hozv glad I shall be 
To die zvith a hope of a welcome from Thee/' 

The above lines, I have been told, were found 
on the desk of a saintly lesuit father, who died 
some years ago in Nezv York. It is supposed that 
he penned them himself shortly before his demise. 



X. 

"O Cross, our one reliance, hail! 
This Holy Passiontide avail 
To give fresh merit to the saint, 
And pardon to the penitent." 

This is the last stanza but one of a hymn which 
the priests of the Church read in their office of 
these last days of Lent. 

"From time immemorial nations have had some 
cherished standard around which their fondest 
hopes have clustered, whether in the days of their 
prosperity or adversity. Patriotic eyes have ever 
regarded their national emblems as beings en- 
dowed with life, infused by the "God of Armies/' 
and often, indeed, as in the days of pagan Rome, 
have these same emblems been looked upon as 
the tutelary deities of the commonwealth itself. 
In times of peace they were enshrouded amid all 
the pomp and splendor that the extravagance of 
a superstitious people could suggest. Gold and 
precious stones were displayed in adorning their 
sacred precincts, burning incense arose in clouds 

179 



180 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

from their altars, while hymns of joy and glad- 
ness announced their appearance among their de- 
voted followers. 

The Roman soldier, as he gazed upon the flag 
of his country, beheld therein the constituent ele- 
ment of his own greatness, and his heart and 
hand were nerved with Herculean strength to 
meet the foe. In the eagles which floated amid 
the din of battle he read the history of his empire 
— her conquests, riches, and power — and cheer- 
fully did he give his life for the ideas this evoked. 
The Saracen, as he marched forth to battle, be- 
held the crescent of his prophet, and was ready 
and willing to die for his cause. As the crescent 
waves before him his imagination pictures the 
prophet beckoning him on to victory or to death; 
his courage rises, his blood boils, and his cimeter 
leops from his scabbard. No danger daunts, no 
privation deters him, so long as he beholds the 
emblem of his religion and his race. 

Napoleon the First, with his battalions, trav- 
ersed the continent of Europe dictating terms to 
kings and emperors, and, finally, marshalled his 
victorious forces around the pyramids of Egypt. 
During this triumphant march his most potent 
auxiliaries were the eagles of France, draped in 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 181 

their tri-colored plumage. At the bridge of Lodi, 
when the French hosts shrank back appalled 
from the carnage caused by the terrific fire of the 
Austrians, Napoleon raised aloft the emblem of 
France before the eyes of his panic-stricken vet- 
erans. "Conquerors of Lodi," said he, "follow 
ycur general." In an instant every heart was 
nerved, and amidst the storms of balls and the 
shrieks of the wounded and dying the bridge was 
carried and the day was won. In the midst of 
the deadly snows of Russia, the burning sands of 
Egypt, or the towering summits of the Alps, the 
great talisman which paved the way for victory 
and gave inspiration to his legions was the na- 
tional symbol of bonny France. How often has 
the tide of battle been turned in favor of England 
by raising her symbol, and the war cry "St. 
George and the Dragon," in the thickest of the 
fray? Yes, and how often, too, in the brunt of bat- 
tle and slaughter, has the drooping spirit of the 
Celt been roused to fierce enthusiasm and quick 
determination at sight of the verdant emblem of 
hi.s own loved isle of the ocean — the dear little 
shamrock. 

What true American can look upon the flag of 
his country without emotion, love and venera- 



182 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

tion? Whether he beholds it draped in orna- 
ment, tattered by the hand of the foe, waving to 
the breeze, or unfurled upon the battlefield or the 
ocean, he reads in every star and every stripe the 
history of his native land : of her past struggles, 
her present glorious renown, and her future fore- 
most rank among the nations of the earth. Un- 
der its shadow the soldier is a braver man, the 
statesman a better patriot, the citizen a truer 
loyalist, and the American tourist abroad prouder 
of his country and his home. Even at the present 
day a feeling akin to that which fired the breast 
of ancient warriors comes over the modern sol- 
dier when he beholds the flag of his country un- 
furled amid the din of battle. It tells him of his 
duty as a man; it makes him forget the dangers 
of the fight by filling him with thoughts of vic- 
tory. 

Even the most indifferent cannot look upon 
the flag of his country without a sensation of pa- 
triotic pride and honor. What a thrill of joy 
rushes through the bosom of the wanderer when 
he beholds in foreign climes the floating emblem 
that speaks to him of home and its cherished con- 
nections ! 

Whether emblazoned with the stars and stripes 



'Vld Thcughts on Old Themes" 183 

of the Union, the harp and sunburst of Ireland, 
or the eagles of France and Prussia, provided it 
be the standard of the land that gave him birth 
he hails it with a filial enthusiasm that would 
prompt him to place it, were he able, on every 
citadel in the world. 

Is it any wonder, then, that the standard of 
Christianity — the cross — should be loved and re- 
vered by so many millions who claim it as their 
own? It is the standard of a people who are not 
confined to any nation on the globe; it is the en- 
sign of a power more formidable that that of 
the Caesars, and reminds us of a kingdom more 
lasting than the world itself. It speaks to the 
hearts of its children in tones of love more pow- 
erful than the threats of tyrants, and nerves 
them, when needs be, to deeds more heroic than 
ever graced the annals of pagan Rome or Sparta. 
Once the degraded instrument of punishment of 
slaves and men unworthy to be Romans, it be- 
holds its destiny changed and sanctified by the 
embrace of a God Himself. It towers above the 
"Roman Eagles" on the Banner of Constantine, 
and leads the way to victories more lasting than 
the empire itself. It is carried by the followers 
of the crucified King into countries the most re- 



184 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

mote; it is planted on shores the most unknown; 
and towers in imposing grandeur where the Ro- 
man Eagles never penetrated. It adorns the 
crowns of kings and emperors; it glitters in the 
coronets of dukes and princes; it shines on the 
breasts of military heroes whom a grateful coun- 
try would honor for their valor and loyalty to 
the State; it caps the fairest monuments of de- 
parted greatness, and rears itself aloft above the 
spires and domes of our churches and cathedrals. 
It is loved and cherished by the lowly as well as 
by the great; it is found in the cottage of the 
peasant, as well as in the palace of the prince; it 
cheers the humble tiller of the soil as well as the 
general who braves the storm of battle. No 
matter to what condition of life its children may 
belong it brings them, in adversity and in pros- 
perity, the happy reward of peace and resigna- 
tion. The dying pauper who has followed it 
through life may hail it from afar, or grasp it in 
his trembling hands, confident of victory at last. 
The Christian general who falls in the cause of 
God may gaze with hopeful eyes upon the cross 
hilt of his broken weapon and call upon the God 
of armies to show him mercy."* 

* Extract from an article read and committed to memory many 
years ago. 



'Vld Thoughts onVTd Themes" 185 

Yes, ever since the date of the sorrowful event 
enacted on Calvary's Mount the cross, with the 
image of our Blessed Lord attached thereto, has 
been universally recognized as the chief symbol 
of Christianity. In the days of the apostles and 
their immediate successors it was their ever pres- 
ent memento, friend, solace, badge, and emblem 
of faith. When the early Christians were hunted 
down like wild beasts and driven by the san- 
guinary pagans into the most secret recesses of 
the earth to escape martyrdom, the holy cross 
ever accompanied them, symbolized their faith, 
and served as a beacon light and a rallying point 
foi the persecuted followers of Jesus. 

Behold Christopher Columbus, discoverer of 
the new world and devoted Catholic that he was, 
planting the cross on the island of San Salvador! 
See the humble but illustrious Jesuit missionary, 
Father Marquette, the discoverer and explorer of 
the "Father of Waters," the Mississippi, sailing 
down that noble stream the crucifix girded on his 
breast; or the saintly Father Jogues, carving the 
sacred symbol of man's redemption on the lofty 
pines of the virgin forests of New York! 

Whenever the missionaries of the Catholic 
Church have abandoned country, home and 



186 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

friends, and penetrated into the remotest wilds 
ot the savage in order to preach the gospel to 
every creature, the holy cross with its divine as- 
sociations always led the way — beckoning them 
on in their great life work of love and mercy. 
Often have these devoted and self-sacrificing 
men, like the courageous Father Damien, the 
leper priest of our own times, met the martyr*s 
fate; but they died in holy triumph, with smiles 
and prayers on their lips, their eyes fixed on the 
sacred cross and their souls on heaven. 

If a nation's flag has been able to stir the soul 
of the soldier to deeds of noble daring amid the 
rush of battle, the cross of Christ has been able 
not less often to fire the spirit of the lone mis- 
sionary with burning love and zeal in the midst of 
an unbroken v/ilderness. 

If with flag in hand the soldier has rushed to 
the m.outh of the cannon, and laid down his life 
to win a battle, no less frequently has the humble 
follower of St. Ignatius, St. Francis, or St. Dom- 
inic, holding aloft the thrice and ever blessed 
cross, rushed to the desert places of the earth, 
where famJne, pestilence and bleeding death en- 
compassed them on every side. 

Look at Ireland! Though her enemies have 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 187 

swarmed round her for centuries, and sorrow, 
famine and slow persecution have multiplied 
their rigors, yet that cross which rules men and 
ages, and braves all tyranny, has ever remained 
standing. The brutal Henry VIII could not 
lower it, the wicked Elizabeth could not uproot 
it, nor the cruel hand of Cromwell tear it from 
the bosom of Green Erin, If the Sister of Char- 
ity or Mercy is enabled to wear a smile in the 
discharge of her arduous, and sometimes repul- 
sive, duties, it is because the crucifix nailed by 
her bed beams upon her with love and compas- 
sion; because the likeness of her Master sancti- 
fies and hallows the symbol under which she la- 
bors. Wherever a Catholic church exists to-day, 
whether in the gay and crowded cities of Lon- 
don, Paris, Dublin or Vienna of the old world; 
New York, Chicago, Boston or Philadelphia in 
the new; in village, town or hamlet; on the path- 
less prairies of the West, the trackless wilds of 
Africa, or the pampas of South America; by the 
banks of the lordly Hudson, or the shores of the 
sweet Pacific; on the plains of Nova Scotia, or 
in the isles of the Southern sea; from turret, stee- 
ple, or dome, heavenward looms the cross! Is 
there not, likewise, something truly significant 



188 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

and sublimely religious in Catholics always plac- 
ing the cross above the last resting place of their 
dear departed? — ^a glorious assertion that those 
who slumber beneath its silent shade in death 
had, when living, placed their hope and trust 
in Him who poured out His life's blood upon 
that sacred sign for their eternal salvation. And 
it is certainly a most encouraging indication of 
the times to note that the cross, which less than 
fifty years ago was exclusively a Catholic symbol, 
is gradually winning its way everywhere, and that 
there are now found but few who dare oppose it. 
In Catholic countries you meet the cross at every 
turn; along the public highway, in the paths 
across the fields, in the shady woods, on lonely 
hilltops and down in the secluded valleys, the 
faith and love of better times have erected this 
sign of our Redemption in order that the weary 
pilgrim on his way through life, by merely cast- 
ing a look of confidence on this emblem of sal- 
vation may be comforted and strengthened, and 
with renewed courage may push vigorously on 
to the eternal resting place at the end of his 
pilgrimage. See, too, how closely the cross is 
interwoven with everything connected with the 
sanctuary, and particularly with the ministrations 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes^' 189 

of the priest at the altar. It is worked in films 
of silk and gold upon every vestment but one 
that he dons for the celebration of the Adorable 
Sacrifice. It is stamped upon the chalice, the 
paten, the pall, the corporal, the purificator, and 
even upon the host, which is to be changed into 
the Body of Christ. It was in the form of a cross 
that the life-giving waters were poured upon 
your infant heads in holy Baptism; that your 
brows were anointed in Confirmation; that you 
are now, in the full-grown years of manhood and 
womanhood, dismissed from the sacred tribunal 
with the benign and consoling assurance that 
your sins are forgiven you, and that you are 
signed before the thrice blessed Body of the 
Savior rests upon your tongue in Holy Commu- 
nion. Yes, and it is, finally, with this sacred sign 
that God's anointed will close your dying eyes, 
seal your dying lips, and bid you go forth to 
meet your eternal doom. And why should it be 
otherwise? Is there any other sign in which we 
can hope to conquer? Does it behoove us, as 
the apostle says, *'to glory in aught save in the 
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which is our 
salvation, our life and our resurrection?" Is not 
the cross the standard and the hope of Chris- 



190 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

tians? Is there a nation, is there a family, is 
^here an individual that does not show some rev- 
erence for the things of the past? Is not the lock 
of hair, the photograph of some dear one passed 
away, the last memento of severed love, kissed 
and pressed to the bosom? No gold could pur- 
chase the faded pictures that hang in the ances- 
tral halls of our mediaeval castles. Far away in 
our antipodes some poor Irish exile will rever- 
ently enclose between the well-thumbed leaves 
of his favorite book a blossom from the hawthorn 
that grew near his cabin door. 

Boleslaus, King of Poland, wore around his 
neck a golden medal with the features of his fa- 
ther stamped upon it. When about to engage in 
any important work he would take the medal in 
his hand, gaze upon it with tearful eyes, and say, 
"O dearly beloved father, may I never do any- 
thing unworthy of thy royal name!'' Thus by 
means of a medal did this king endeavor to re- 
member the blessings and example of his father. 
If statesmen, philosophers, warriors, and citizens 
of all classes love and revere their symbols be- 
cause of the events and circumstances they re- 
call, why should not the true Christian likewise 
love and respect the hallowed symbol which 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 191 

brings before him the facts and incidents con- 
nected with the passion and crucifixion of his 
Savior? 

And is this universal respect which nations 
have for their symbols, and which all classes of 
people manifest for the mementoes of the past, 
to be cried down as superstitious and sinful when 
applied to the sacred cross? There are men who 
will scoff at the devotion and veneration of the 
Catholic for the emblem of his Redemption and 
who will pay large sums of money for a broken 
faun, or a coin covered with verdigris. Our sep- 
arated brethren might perhaps be less inclined to 
carp at us, and better able to understand how 
natural it is for the Catholic to venerate sacred 
relics, and to hold in deep esteem and love the 
sacred cross, did they recall more frequently to 
mind the enthusiastic admiration and veneration 
that sometimes manifest themselves among the 
populace on the demise of some great man. Es- 
pecially was this noticed in the case of Gen. U. S 
Grant. Those who could secure twigs from 
trees growing near the hero's tomb, a pinch of 
earth, a flower even, esteemed themselves em- 
inently and incomparably happy. Yes, one en- 
thusiast did not hesitate to offer the embalmer 



192 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

a large sum of money for a lock of the silent 
chieftain's hair. How absurd the idea that it is 
the material of the flag, or of the cross, which 
calls forth these powerful emotions, these high 
resolutions! How false and delusive the supposi- 
tion that idolatry can spring from the contempla- 
tion and reverence of objects which place before 
the mind's eye, in the form of symbols, the im- 
portant events of a nation or the sufferings and 
death of a God! 

Let no one, we insist, question the motives or 
the propriety of his fellow man who bows down 
in tears, in love, in gratitude and devotion before 
the recognized emblems of great nations and 
Godlike achievements. Such, then, is the cross 
— the standard of the Christian. And how do 
you regard it? Do you love it? Do you revere 
it? Does it occupy the warmest spot in your 
heart's affections, the best place in your home 
adornments? If you were to be summoned 
hence to-night would the crucifix brinj: up be- 
fore your dying vision strange or familiar 
thoughts? 

What sentiments does the cross, pointing sky- 
ward from the spire of your pretty little church, 
bring home to your minds when you view it from 



"Old Thoughts on Old Thcfnes" 193 

afar? Is it to you a meaningless symbol, con- 
veying no higher truth, speaking in no louder 
terms to your hearts, than the flag pole on the 
city hall or the weather vane on a Methodist 
meeting-house? When St. Thomas Aquinas, the 
celebrated theologian and Angelic Doctor, and 
one of the greatest minds that ever lived, was 
asked where he acquired his immense and won- 
derful knowledge, he took his inquisitor to his 
humble cell and pointed to the crucifix. Should 
not the mute reply of this distinguished saint 
teach us also a lesson, even though our lines be 
not cast in the deep springs of science and learn- 
ing? 

But bear in mind that He who sanctified the 
banner of the cross, and raised it to that degree 
of glory which it has so universally attained, has 
likewise given expression to two very significant 
sentences: "If any man will come after me, let 
him deny himself and take up his cross and fol- 
low me." And again: "He that taketh not up 
his cross and followeth me is not worthy of me.'' 
Regard the great symbol of Christianity as we 
will, here, at least, is the course marked out for 
us all, the badge that will testify to our enroll- 
ment among the disciples of the Savior. "Go no 



194 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes*' 

other way/' says St. Augustine, "but that by 
which Christ went; the way seems hard, but it is 
safe." Now the way that Christ went, and the 
way that all his saints have gone, was the narrow, 
rugged, thorny, but royal road of the Holy 
Cross, and there is no other path to life, and to 
true interior peace, but the same ever blessed 
way of the Holy Cross and of daily mortification. 
"Go where we will, seek what we will, and we 
shall not find a higher way above, nor a safer 
way below, than the way of the Holy Cross. Dis- 
pose and order all things in a manner best cal- 
culated to succeed, and in fittest consonance 
with our most sanguine expectations, and we 
shall still find something to suffer, either willing- 
ly or unwillingly ; and so we shall always find the 
cross; for either we shall feel pain in the body, or 
sustain in the soul tribulation of spirit. Some- 
times it will seem as though God Himself has 
abandoned us, at other times we will be afflicted 
by our neighbor, and, what is more, we will often 
be a trouble and an annoyance to ourselves." — 
Imitation of Christ. B. ii:c. 12. 

The cross, therefore, is always ready, and ev- 
erywhere awaits us. In fact this whole mortal 
life is full of miseries and everywhere marked 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 195 

With crosses; and so, indeed, will It be with us 
wherever we are, and so indeed will we find it 
wherever we go. You have your cross, I have 
mine. Suffering and trials are incident to mor- 
tality; and nothing is more acceptable to God, 
nothing more salutary to ourselves, than to bear 
them willingly for the Savior's sake. Our Divine 
Redeemer is the spiritual King of our souls, and 
it is by the love and spirit of His cross that He 
must reign therein. By this happy instrument 
He has rescued us from the power of sin and 
delivered us from death and hell. 

Let us gladly, therefore, take up our cross and 
follow Jesus. **He has gone before us carrying 
His cross. He died for us upon the Cross, and if 
we are His companions in suffering we shall also 
be His companions in glory.'' 

Indeed, had there been anything better and 
more beneficial to man's salvation than suffering 
Christ certainly would have shown it by word 
and example; for He manifestly exhorts both His 
disciples who followed Him, and all who desire to 
follow Him, to bear the cross, saying: "If any 
man will come after me, let him deny himself and 
take up his cross and follow me." "He that tak- 



196 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'^ 

eth not up his cross and follow me is not worthy 
of me:'— Id. 

"Seek not to drop the cross you wear, 
Or lay it down; for if you do 
Another shall be built for you 
More difficult and hard to bear. 

The cross is always made to fit 
The back which bears it. Be content, 
Accept the burden which was sent 

And strive to make the best of it. 

Think not how heavy is your load; 
Think not how rough the road or long; 
Look up and say: *Lord, I am strong, 
And love makes beautiful the road.' 

Who toils in faith and knows not fear 
Shall live to find his cross, some day. 
Supported all along the way 
By angels who are walking near." 

—Ella IVkeeler JVilcox. 

I leave oflf, therefore, as I began, and I say 
for you and for me, in the sweet words of the 
hymn "Vexilla Regis," 

"O Cross, our one reliance, hail! 
This Holy Passiontide avail 
To give fresh merit to the saint. 
And pardon to the penitent." 



Perseverance. 



''One thing have I asked of the Lord, this I 
will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of 
the Lord all the days of my life/' — Ps. XXVI: 4, 

''The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and 
we are not saved/' — Jer. VIII: 20, 

"And you shall be hated by all men for my 
name's sake; but he that shall persevere unto the 
end, he shall be saved/' — St, Matt, X: 22, 

"Every noble work is at first impossible/^ — 
Carlyle, 

"A falling drop at last will cave a stone/* — 
Lucretius, 

"No rock so hard but that a little wave may 
beat admission in a thousand years." — Tennyson. 

"I argue not against heaven's hand or will, nor 
bate a jot of heart or hope, but still bear up and 
steer right onward/' — Milton. 



XI. 

When Michael Angelo, one of the greatest ar- 
tists that ever lived, was asked why he did not 
marry, he replied: "Painting is my wife and my 
works are my children/' On another occasion, 
while busily at work on a celebrated painting, a 
person who had studiously watched him for some 
time asked him why he took such exceeding 
pains, giving it a little touch in this place, and a 
slight brush in that, a faint stroke here, and a 
deeper tinge there; these, after all, are only tri- 
fles. Yes, replied the artist, they are only trifles, 
it is true, but trifles make perfection, and per- 
fection is no trifle. Michael Angelo touched and 
retouched the canvas till its figures all but spoke; 
and thus he became a master artist. Had he laid 
aside the easel* and the brush after his first pro- 
duction he would never have arrived at the de- 
gree of excellence which he subsequently at- 
tained; neither would his name have come down 
to us as worthy of imitation, nor his works as 
worthy of our admiration and study. But, be- 

199 



200 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 

cause he could say: this one thing I do well; 
because he labored earnestly and with all the 
energy of his will, he reached the highest perfec- 
tion of his art. And so is it, and so will you find 
it, in every other art and science, and in all the 
employments and departments of life. "All the 
achievements of human undertaking at which we 
look with praise or wonder are instances of the 
resistless force of perseverance. It is by this that 
the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant 
countries are united by canals. It gives power 
to weakness, opens the world's wealth to pover- 
ty, spreads fertility over the barren landscape, 
and bids the choicest fruits and flowers spring 
up and flourish in the desert abodes of thorns and 
briars. If a man were to compare the single 
stroke of a pickax, or one impression of the 
spade, with the general design and last result, he 
would be overwhelmed by the sense of their 
disproportion; yet those petty operations, inces- 
santly continued, in time surmount the greatest 
difficulties; and m.ountains are leveled and oceans 
bounded by the slender force of human beings.*' 
— Samuel Johnson. "The block of granite which 
was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, be- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Thmies*' 201 

comes a stepping stone in the pathway of the 
strong." — Carlyle. 

"Rome was not built in a day, 
And water, constantly dropping, 
Wears the hardest stones away.'* 

Few things, in fact, are impossible in them- 
selves, and it is for want of application, rather 
than of means, that men fail of success. Now if 
this be true of all things else, especially and es- 
sentially is it so of the great and all-important 
affair of our salvation. For in this, as in the 
minor affairs of life, success is that rich and lus- 
trous crown which none may hope to win with- 
our first securing its two most resplendent and 
costly gems, industry and perseverance. 

"Not everyone," declares our Blessed Savior, 
"that sayeth Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
kingdom of heaven ; but he that doth the will of 
my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven." — Matt. vii:21. And 
again: "The kingdom of heaven suffereth vio- 
lence, and the violent bear it away." — Matt. 
xi:12. The race is not always to the fleet, nor 
the battle to the strong; but he that shall per- 
severe to the end, he shall be saved. "Qui per- 



202 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

severaverit usque ad mortem, hie salvus erit.'* 
"Know you not that they that run in the race all 
run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run 
that you may obtain/' — St. Paul 1 Cor. ix. 

St. Jerome says that many begin well, but that 
few persevere. Alas! yes. Casting a glance 
along the shore of time, how many a wreck do 
we not behold? How many, starting out on the 
ocean of life with every prospect of a happy and 
prosperous voyage before them, have perished, 
and perished miserably, almost within sight of 
the harbor of safety, peace and rest. And here I 
recall an incident that I may be permitted to 
mention to you in passing. The first time this 
little sentence that I have just made use of 
("passing along the shore of time,'' etc.,) struck 
me with remarkable force was during the second 
year of my college course. I jotted it down at 
the time, as it fell from the lips of a distinguished 
ecclesiastic; and I remember that the companion 
who sat alongside of me did the same. We are 
both priests now — he a professor in a famed edu- 
cational institution that looms over the green 
hills of Maryland, and I the pastor of this little 
parish on the plains of Illinois. But he from 
whose lips they fell has long ago sadly exem- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 203 

plified in his own life, as, alas! it is possible that 
any of us may, the truth of his own words, and 
has this many a year been stranded among the 
wrecks that strew the shore of time — Saul, the 
first King of Israel; Judas, one of the chosen 
twelve; Tertullian, a learned apologist of the 
early Church ; Martin Luther, the apostate monk, 
and hosts of others of ancient and modern days ; 
men highly favored of God and blessed with no 
mean natural gifts, men that might to-day be 
burning and shining lights of virtue to cheer us 
on our way, and saints to plead our cause with 
God in heaven, had they only been faithful to 
the end. They began well, and continued for a 
time, but ended badly, because they failed to per- 
severe in God's holy love and service. "The 
Lord,'* says St. Jerome, "requires not only the 
beginning of a good life, but also the end; it is 
the end that shall be rewarded." "Finis coronet 
opus." "The end crowns the work." No, my 
friends, neither youth, nor health, nor long years 
of tested virtue can afiford any grounded assur- 
ance of final perseverance, or of a return to vir- 
tue (if, unhappily, it be lost), to those who place 
their reliance on such feeble supports. You may 
lead a life of more than angelic purity from the 



204 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

cradle till your locks are silver, and fill up that 
life with a long list of hard and bitter penances, 
and then in an evil hour, rashly presuming on 
the strength of your accumulated merits, hearken 
to the voice of the tempter and fall, and death 
leap out of its ambush upon you while you are 
fallen, and, lo! you are the hopeless, hapless vic- 
tim of eternal ruin. 

Saints on the bed of death have been tempted 
to despair. Martyrs about to grasp the crown of 
life have lost confidence and fell away. Hence, 
St. Lawrence Justinian calls perseverance "the 
gate of heaven.'' If now you are the friend of 
God, well is it for you ; but remember you are not 
yet saved. And when shall you be saved? When 
you shall have persevered to the end. 

Have you begun a good life? Then thank God 
for it, but bear in mind the warning of St. Ber- 
nard: "The reward is promised to him who be- 
gins, but is given only to him who perseveres.*' 
It IS not enough, then, to run for the prize, you 
must run till you win it. "So run," says St. Paul; 
"that you may obtain." — 1 Cor. ix:24. 

This is one of the uncertainties, one of the 
greatest trials, of our present state, that we never 
know whether we shall be eternally saved or eter- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 205 

nally lost. "Man knoweth not/' say the Scrip- 
tures, "whether he be worthy of love or hatred." 
And, for a soul that truly loves its God, the fact 
that it may any moment lose His grace and be 
forever separated from Him is cause for contin- 
ual fear and dread. Hence the great apostle of 
the Gentiles could in all truth exclaim — "Cupio 
dissolvi et esse cum Christo" — "I desire to be 
dissolved and to be with Christ." — Phil. i:23. 
"Who will deliver me from the body of this 
death; for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 
— Phil. i:21. But, not till his life work was end- 
ed, not till the dawn of that thrice happy day 
when death closed over his mortal career, could 
the same St. Paul say in all confidence and truth: 
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, 
there is laid up for me a crown of justice which 
the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in 
that day; and not only to me, but to them also 
that love His coming." H. Tim. iv:7-8. 

"When a certain anxious person," says the 
author of the Imitation of Christ, "who often- 
times wavered between hope and fear, once over- 
come with sadness threw himself upon the 
ground in prayer before one of the altars in the 



206 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

church, and revolving these things in his mind, 
said, ^Oh, if I only knew that I should persevere,' 
that very instant he heard within him this heav- 
enly answer : * And if thou didst know this what 
wouldst thou do?' Do now what thou wouldst 
then do and thou shalt be perfectly secure." — 
B. I, c. XXV :2. 

There are three great enemies opposed to our 
final perseverance; and not till we shall have 
passed beyond the bounds of earth will they 
leave us in peace or give us rest. These enemies 
are the world, the flesh and the devil. The world 
(by which of course we mean wicked men, their 
maxims, vanities, and pomps) is the sworn ene- 
my of Christ, and of all those who would model 
their lives on His precepts and example. '*Love 
not the world, nor the things that are in the 
world. For all that is in the world is the concu- 
piscence of the flesh, and concupiscence of the 
eyes, and the pride of life." — 1 St. John ii:15-16. 
There is no alternative; for the maxims of the 
world are diametrically opposed to the maxims of 
Jesus Christ. What the world esteems, Jesus 
Christ has called folly. "For the wisdom of this 
world is foolishness with God." 1 Cor. iii:19, 
Christ says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 207 

^*Lay not up for yourselves treasures here, where 
the moth and rust consume, and where thieves 
break through and steal/' But the world says: 
Blessed are the rich, for they are looked up to 
and respected; get all the money you can, no 
matter how you get it; lay up for yourselves sil- 
ver and gold, and large tracts of land. But again, 
^'Blessed,'' says the Scripture, **is the man who 
hath not put his trust in money, nor in treas- 
ures;''* and, "be not afraid when a man shall be 
made rich, and when the glory of his house shall 
be increased, for when he shall die he shall take 
nothing away, neither shall his glory descend 
with him."— Ps. xlviii:17. 

This truth of Holy Writ is often brought home 
to us when those whom we knew, personally or 
by reputation, as having lived for money are 
summoned to their final reckoning. How fright- 
fully humiliating it must be to a man, say of 
threescore years and ten, who has spent his life 
in trying to amass a fortune, or to acquire hun- 
dreds of acres, to reflect at this period of his life 
that perhaps only a day, or an hour, stands be- 
tween him and utter poverty; and that he may 
be suddenly summoned to another sphere, to be- 

• Eccles. xxxi:8. 



a08 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

gin life without a single one of the advantages 
that made him so powerful and so comfortable in 
this world below. This is a very commonplace 
train of thought, but, surely, it is well worth our 
attention. If men thought more seriously and 
sensibly on this line there would be less greed in 
the world, and less antagonism between the rich 
and the poor. But the world will be no greater 
enemy to such than it is or will be to you and to 
me if we foolishly allow ourselves to be capti- 
vated by its tinseled riches, or carried away by 
its follies and dissipation. 

"I am not at all uneasy," says Cicero, "that I 
came into, and have so far passed, my course in 
this world; because I have so lived in it that I 
have reason to believe that I have been of some 
use to it; and, when the close comes, I shall quit 
life as I would an inn, and not as a real home." 
"I hold this world," writes Shakespeare, "but 
as a stage, where every man must play his part, 
and mine a sad one." 

Our own flesh with its vices and concupis- 
cences is an enemy of which death alone will rid 
us, and against which we can defend ourselves 
only by being always watchful, unceasing in 
prayer, and careful always to avoid the occasions 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 209 

of Sin, by which, of course, we understand all per- 
sons, places and things that may easily lead us 
into sin. Negkct of avoiding the occasion of sin 
was the cause of the fall of our first parents, and 
has since led many and many to perdition. God 
had forbidden them even to touch the forbidden 
fruit. "God commanded us," said Eve, "that we 
should not eat, and that we should not touch it." 
— Gen. iii:3. 

But, through want of caution, she first be- 
gan to look at the apple; she afterwards took it 
in her hand, and finally ate it. 

The eyes are the windows of the soul; and 
what they do not see the heart does not crave for. 

"Averte, Domine, oculos meos, ne videant van- 
itatem." "Turn away my eyes, O Lord, that they 
may not see vanity," was the prayer of the royal 
psalmist, and might, with much profit, be ours 
also. 

Finally, that deceitful and crafty spirit, who of 
old met with such grand success in his first at- 
tack, and who ever since "goeth about like a 
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,"* is 
the avowed and bitter enemy of every child that 



• 1 Peter v:& 



210 ''Old Thoughts on Old Themes*' 

lives. No resistance baffles him, and no defeat 
disarms him; but, emboldened by each succes- 
sive victory, and inflamed with ever-increasing 
demoniac rage and hatred by every repulse, con- 
fiding in his extensive and successful experience 
of nearly six thousand years, he studies attentive- 
ly and carefully each individual character; dis- 
covers wherein each one's weakness Hes; re- 
doubles his onslaughts as life goes on, and re- 
serves his strongest forces for a final conquest at 
death's dark hour. 

These are the enemies that stand in our way on 
the heavenward road; these are the foes that are 
leagued against us in our contest for the crown 
of life. **For our wrestling,'' as the apostle tells 
us, "is not against flesh and blood, but against 
principalities and powers; against the rulers of 
the world of this darkness, against the spirits of 
wickedness in high places. Therefore take unto 
you the armor of God, that you may be able to 
resist in the evil day and stand in all things per- 
fect." — Eph. vi :12-13. If, therefore, as the Epis- 
tle of to-day* tells us, we would "so run that we 
may obtain," if we would persevere to the end 



' Septuagesima Sunday. 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 211 

and attain the crown of life, we must adopt the 
means necessary to obtain salvation. 

Always confidently hope and trust in the in- 
finite merits of the blessed passion and death of 
His only begotten Son, and ever humbly distrust 
ourselves. For, if stars have fallen from heaven, 
if those whose works seemed praiseworthy have 
fallen to the very lowest, nay, if those who have 
fed on the bread of angels have been delighted 
with the husks of swine, how can dust and ashes, 
as we are, dare to presume? Let us, then, follow- 
ing the advice of the devout Thomas a Kempis, 
"never promise ourselves security in this life, 
however good religious or devout solitaires we 
may seem to be;'' for, as the same pious author 
truthfully remarks, "there is no order so holy, 
nor place so retired, where there are no tempta- 
tions;" and the experience of St. Jerome, joined 
to that of many others, teaches us that in the 
caves of Palestine we may bring back to our view 
the theatres of Rome ; and that where the eye can 
trace nothing but the footprints of wild beasts 
the imagination can bring dangerous and seduc- 
tive objects before it. If we would strive for the 
mastery we must refrain ourselves from all 
things; if we would receive an incorruptible 



212 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

crown we must run, not as an uncertainty; we 
must fight, not as one beating the air, but we 
must chastise our bodies and bring them into 
subjection to the spiri . 

We should not, however, be disheartened in 
our spiritual warfare whatever trials surround us, 
whatever difficulties lie ahead of us, whatever 
recollections of the past sadden us. Remember 
that earnest endeavor will bring success, but that 
discouragement is sure defeat. In the accesses 
of temptation, in the successive failure of our 
plans, in the disappointment of our aflfections, in 
every crisis and revolution of our lives, let us 
ever hearken to the voice of our Maker, and 
never turn a deaf ear to the inspirations of His 
grace. 

Then, though the shades of night may lower 
over us, though rocks may surround us, still, 
with prayer as our defense, with the Sacraments 
as our shelter, Mary, our ever Blessed Mother, 
and all the angels and saints of God as our pro- 
tectors, we will, in their blessed light, be able to 
steer on our course in safety; and under their 
heavenly guidance we shall finally obtain "the 
prize" for which the apostle so earnestly exhorts 
us to run. 



"Hold lovely) are Thy tabernacles, Lord of 
Hosts! my soul longeth and fainteth for the 
courts of the Lord." 

"Glorious things are said of thee, O city of 
God/'—Ps. LXXXni and LXXXVL 

"We see now through a glass in an obscure 
manner: but then face to face/' — / Cor. XHI: 12. 

St. Mary of Egypt, who dwelt nearly fifty 
years in the desert, being asked at the end of her 
life by the Abbot Zosimiis hozv she had been able 
to live for so many years in such a zvilderness, 
replied: 'With the hope of heaven." 

"There is but one ivay to heaven for the learned 
and the unlearned" — Jeremy Taylor. 

"He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely 
to get thither; as the only zvay to hit the mark is 
'to keep the eye fixed upon it." — Bishop Home. 



XII. 

"And after this I saw a great multitude, which 
no man could number, of all nations, and peoples, 
and tribes, and tongues, standing before the 
throne, and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed 
with white robes, and palms in their hands: 

And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Sal- 
vation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, 
and to the Lamb. And all the angels stood 
round about the throne, and about the ancients, 
and about the four living creatures ; and they fell 
before the throne upon their faces, and adored 
God, saying: Amen, benediction, and glory, and 
wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor, and power, 
and strength to our God, forever and ever, 
Amen." — Apoc. vii:9-13. 

"The Church Militant of Christ is ever fair and 
beautiful. She is beautiful in the divine grace 
which adorns and illuminates her soul. She is 
beautiful in her heroic acts of charity, in her 
undying hope, and in her unchanging and un- 
changeable faith. The glory of her risen Spouse 

215 



216 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

shines round about her. Though she stands on 
Calvary, she is encompassed by the splendors 
that flow from the light of Thabor. 

"How tender and touching are her devotions! 
What sweet thoughts are inspired by her crosses, 
her beads, and her paintings! How beautiful are 
her wayside chapels, her hidden oratories, her 
gray and silent convents, her ivied monasteries, 
and her awe-inspiring mediaeval cathedrals ! 

"She is beautiful, too, in her children — in her 
virgins and her martyrs, in her monks and her 
hermits, her priests and hei pontiffs.''* But in 
nothing (let me add to the words of the author 
of this quotation), it must be assuredly confessed, 
is she so surpassingly beautiful and grand, in 
nothing so strikingly orderly and lovely, as in the 
feasts of precept and devotion that mark the 
course of her liturgical year. 

To-day, while bleak November winds send 
their chilling blasts over the earth, already thick- 
ly carpeted with the sear and yellow leaves of 
autumn; while naked boughs and faded flowers 
evidence the departure of all that is most charm- 
ing in the material world about us, and grimly 



• Catholic Flowers from Protestant Gardens.— James J. Treacy. 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'* 217 

betoken the onward and steady march of the pen- 
sive gloom of winter, she would transport us, in 
imagination, beyond the evanescent scenes of 
earth to the fairer and brighter prospects of that 
urdiscovered country where change and decay 
shall never enter, in order that, by reflecting on 
the pleasing and indescribable possibilities that 
aw'ait us in our future state of existence we may 
be encouraged so to shape our lives here below 
that we may be worthy to be admitted within the 
glorious ranks of the Church triumphant in heav- 
en. But while we acknowledge that it is meet 
and just so to do, and reverently bow in meek 
and humble submission to the pious desires of 
Mother Church, we must candidly confess that 
even the most complete and glowing description 
that could possibly be given of the theme before 
us must fall infinitely short of the great and mag- 
nificent reality; for even the renowned apostle of 
the Gentiles, to whom was vouchsafed a vision of 
the heaven of heavens, at a loss to express the 
grandeur and sublimity of the wonders that he 
there beheld, could only exclaim, in sentiments 
of enraptured admiration: *'Eye hath not seen, 
ear hath not heard, nor hath it as yet entered into 
the heart of man id conceive, what God hath pre- 



218 *Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

pared for those who love Him and keep His 
commandments/' — 1 Cor. ii:9. 

But, as stars of lesser magnitude reflect the 
golden splendor of orbs of greater brilliancy, as 
light and shadow, when viewed in pleasing con- 
trast, display the hidden beauties of painted or 
chiseled art, and bring them out more fully, so 
may we, by a brief consideration of all that can 
charm the eye, delight the ear or regale the mind 
in the material world about us rise to a clearer 
perception, though dim withal, of those tran- 
scendent joys that to-day inundate the souls of 
the just made perfect. 

Notwithstanding the callousness of some 
minds, before whom all the glories of the com- 
bined spheres pass in daily succession without 
touching their hearts, elevating their fancies, or 
leaving any durable remembrance, yet, decidedly 
wonderful and grand are the innumerable beau- 
ties that the nether world unfolds to the eye of 
the man of refined and delicate sensibility. For, 
whether with the gentle and affectionate Cowper 
we view these beauties in the **mellow lustre of 
the rising or setting sun, the sparkling concave 
of the midnight sky, the mountain forest tossing 
and roaring to the storm or warbling with all the 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 219 

melodies of a calm summer evening; the sweet 
interchange of hill and dale, sunshine and shade, 
grove, lawn and water which an extensive land- 
scape offers to the view; or last, though not by 
far the least, the scenery of old ocean, so lovely, 
so majestic, so tremendous," — beautiful they are, 
we repeat, and entrancingly grand, to all who 
view them aright. And, must we not all feel a 
perplexity, chastened by a sense of beauty, when 
we think of the myriads of fair and gorgeous ob- 
jects that exist and perish without any eye to 
witness their glories; the flowers that are born to 
blush unseen in the wilderness; the gems, so mar- 
velously fashioned, that stud the dark, untrod- 
den caverns; the living things, with adornments 
of yet richer workmanship, that, solitary and un- 
known, glitter and die? Now these forms — these 
appearances of pervading beauty, which steal 
over our meditations like strains and snatches of 
a sweet and distant symphony, and touch all 
thoughtful minds with a sense of hidden delight, 
a still and grateful admiration, must they not ex- 
cite within us no unworthy thoughts? Must 
they not impress us, even, with an indestructible 
conviction, far beyond all that we can possibly 
know or conceive, of the beauty, order and sym- 



220 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

metry of those objects that await the sense of 
sight in the world beyond the grave, when these 
and even more ecstatic scenes will be viewed 
from the battlements of that new Jerusalem, 
where, as the Sacred Text informs us, the 
streets are of purest gold, the walls of jasper and 
the gates of dazzling pearl ; where the Lord God 
Almighty is the temple and His glory the lamp 
that enlightens it?* When in addition to the 
mxre spectacle and love of all this, yea, when in- 
finitely above, and immeasurably beyond, all else 
that can be possibly imagined or described, we 
add the secure, undisturbed and lasting posses- 
sion of that "Beauty ever ancient and ever new," 
the possession and enjoyment of Whom will 
ravish the souls of the blest with renewed and 
ever-increasing delights during the continued 
rounds of the eternal years, must we not, I say, 
in view of all this, justly conclude, with the in- 
spired writer, and bear him out in the propriety 
of his wondrous declaration, that "eye," in very 
truth, "hath not seen what God hath prepared 
for those who love Him and keep His command- 
ments?" 

But, "earth's prospects," to quote again our 
poet author, "be they never so charming, would 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 221 

soon weary the sight of desultory man were 
there not something further to soothe and satisfy 
the human ear — mighty winds that sweep the 
skirt of some far-spreading wood of ancient 
growth ; the fast fluttering leaves of unnumbered 
branches waving in the breeze or sighing to the 
gale; the less composure that waits upon the 
roar of distant floods; the still softer voice of the 
neighboring fountain, or ot tiny rills, that slip 
through the clefted rock, and losing themselves 
in the lordly flow of some gentle river at length 
betray the secret of their silent course in the 
dash of deep and dark blue ocean on his winding 
shore." — The Task. All these, inanimate though 
their sounds may be, exhilarate the spirit and re- 
store the tone of languid nature; and though 
they may, and do, when they come to us in our 
better moments, excite within us inexpressible 
sentiments of delight and pleasure, still their un- 
pretentious charms must forever remain incom- 
plete till graced by the silver-toned accompani- 
ments of melody and song. "There is music in 
all things, if man had ears," said Byron. "In the 
germ, when the first trace of life begins to stir, it 
is the nurse of the soul ; it murmurs in the ear, 
and the child sleeps; the tones are the compan- 



222 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

ions of his dreams, — they are the world in which 
he Hves." — Bettina. 

And as life grows older the meaning of song 
grows deeper. "It moves us and we know not 
why; we feel the tears, but cannot trace their 
source. We love it for the buried hopes, the gar- 
nered memories and the tender feelings it can 
summon at a touch." — Miss L. E, Landon. 

It delights the ear, recreates the mind, soothes 
the soul, and, as we descend in the vale of years, 
it is all of heaven we have below, leading us to 
the edge of the infinite. 

Speak as much as we will, and as beautifully as 
we will, yet, no better exponent of the power of 
music to charm remains than the recollection of 
those happy, instantaneous emotions which we 
have all experienced, and which invariably arise 
within us, when strains expressive of joy, tran- 
quility, or the softer passions break upon the ear; 
or; of the deeper gloom, in which sounds compat- 
ible with our darker moods never fail to tincture 
the thoughts and overshadow the imagination 
when heard in the dreary hours of solitude and 
silence. And oh, if "music's force has charms 
to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or 
bend the knotted oak" (Congreve) ; if, as legends 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 223 

tell us, magic numbers and persuasive sound 
have informed with Hving souls the adamantine 
powers of nature; yea, if the single golden touch 
of a seraphic hand on chords unknown to mortal 
minstrelsy could throw a saint of God into an 
ecstasy of extreme delight, what shall v/e say of 
the celestial harmonies of those thousands of 
thousands that minister before the Ancient of 
Days — those thousand times a hundred thousand 
angelic voices, swelled by the undying chorus of 
that great multitude, which no man could num- 
ber, of all nations, and peoples, and tribes, and 
tongues, whose unending anthems of praise and 
benediction continually resound through the 
starlit vaults of heaven, and float around the 
spangled throne of its Immaculate Queen, till 
they are lost in the bosom of the Most High. 
Furthermore, to all that is calculated to afford 
pleasure to poor mortal man in his present state 
of existence add the loftiest and most inimitable 
productions of poetic and artistic genius, what- 
ever is best fitted to rouse or soothe the imagina- 
tion, draw forth the affections, or employ the 
understanding; multiply, adorn, embellish them 
as you will, concentrate them all in one simul- 
taneous round of uninterrupted enjoyment, and 



224 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

you have, In the end, only an imperfect picture, 
a very, very faint conception of the indescribable, 
the inconceivable, joys of heaven. But even this 
IS not all. We know that besides the tranquil 
possession of every possible, positive good, there 
will likewise be the absence of everything that 
could, even in the remotest degree, occasion pain 
or sorrow to the soul. In heaven there will be 
no misgiving, no animosity, no envy, and no 
jealousy. There there will be no one to chide or 
thwart us, no one to slight, oppose or contradict 
us. There there will be none of those inexplicable 
idiosyncrasies, none of those strange and varied 
forms of taste and feeling, which in this cold 
world below so frequently estrange hearts, en- 
gender cruel misunderstandings, and, often, alas! 
sever the sacred bonds of pure and holy friend- 
ship. There, in fine, there will be no sickness, no 
disease, and no death. No, that dark-plumed 
warrior of unnumbered conquests, the trophies 
of whose long and undisputed reign loom over 
the hilltops of every village and city throughout 
the length and breadth of the land, shall never 
pass the pearly portals of heaven. And will not 
the possession and enjoyment of all this be won- 
derfully enhanced by the agreeable companion- 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 225 

ship of those who are to share it with us? There 
we shall meet the patriarchs and prophets of the 
olden time, the apostles and martyrs of the early 
Church, the holy and the just, the noble and the 
good, the innocent and penitent saints of every 
age, and cHme, and nation. And oh, bliss in- 
comprehensible ! there we shall at length behold, 
and be forever united with, her who was the hum- 
blest of the humble, the purest of the pure, the 
stainless mother of Jesus. And though in holy 
sacrifice and fervent prayer we are ever mindful 
of our departed dead, whom unrequited Justice 
may yet detain on the borderland of twilight and 
of longing, still we fondly cherish the hope that 
there are, on this the joyous festival of All the 
Saints, amid the glorious assembly of the blest 
many who were near and dear to us all. Some 
among us will, perchance, recall the hallowed 
memory of that guileless friend of our gay and 
careless childhood, who drifted from us so early 
in the days of his purity and innocence, while we 
were left to journey on. More will revert to 
some period, perhaps in the not very long ago, 
when a darling brother or a virgin sister grew 
weary, and laid down the burden of life, before 
their young hearts were stained by the sin and 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

sorrow of a wicked world, or were soured by its 
trials and disappointments. Others of us, in fine, 
will remember the furrowed brow or the silvered 
locks of a sainted parent, whose kindly words of 
encouragement and sympathy we still treasure in 
our heart of hearts, while whatever was fair and 
excellent in their lives comes forth from the 
gloom in ideal beauty, and leads us on through 
the wilds and mazes of our own mortal way. 

All these, whether imagination picture them 
to us as bowing down in adoration at the feet of 
the Omnipotent, or treading the flowery meads 
of heaven clothed in robes of ethereal whiteness, 
will, we feel confident, lift up their pure hands 
in intercession for us to-day, before the throne 
of grace and mercy. 

And should it be our own fortunate lot event- 
ually to attain the object of our being's end and 
aim, I fancy that, looking back on the devious 
passes of the few and evil days of life's checkered 
career, we shall lovingly comprehend how the 
Omnipotent hand, as well as the all-searching 
eye of an all-ruling Providence reached from 
end to end through the whole extent of times and 
places, in His admirable wisdom most powerfully, 
but sweetly, disposing of all, ever making His 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 227 

creatures submissive to His inscrutable designs, 
even while they seemed to take their ordinary 
course. 

And casting an inward glance upon ourselves, 
no longer encompassed with the trappings of frail 
mortality, but viewing our glorified nature in the 
spotless mirror of our Maker's boundless and 
ever-adorable perfections, we shall better and 
more perfectly realize how, in the disappointment 
of our affections, in the failure of our plans, and 
the successive fallacies of our hopes, God's ways 
were not our ways; and how what we oftentimes 
unwisely deemed an irreparable loss proved a 
priceless and incomparable gain. 

Then too, at least, it shall be given the priest 
of God to know why he was singled out to be the 
dispenser of those high and holy mysteries that 
the winged seraphs that share his destiny would 
enviously discharge. And as the placid tide of 
unblighted happiness and unruffled gladness 
courses on, the mild, forbearing matron, the vir- 
tuous youth, and modest maiden, all safely 
housed at last within the sacred precincts of their 
eternal home, and beholding him as the dear in- 
strument that opened to them the safe and nar- 
row path that led them to their Savior's side, will 



228 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes'' 

bless him a thousand and a thousand times, and 
their unalloyed joy, which now no man can take 
from them, and that abundance of sweet peace 
which passeth all understanding, will be another 
lustrous jewel to brighten the aureola of his own 
glory for evermore. 

Though great beyond the power of words to 
say, as is, and must be, the bhss of the blessed in 
heaven, still were it possible for them to appre- 
hend, for one single instant, the loss of the joy 
which they possess, such an apprehension would 
render them more miserable than all the bliss 
which they experience could render them happy. 

We know, however, that such a fear can never, 
never come near their borders. Bathed as they are 
in the unfading brightness of God's unfailing pres- 
ence, and basking forever in the clear, unclouded 
light of His infinite love, all possible cravings 
are at once and forever perfectly satiated; they 
rest in Him as their ultimate end, secure in the 
assurance of never again being separated from 
Him. But what comparison shall I employ ad- 
equate enough to convey to you even a faint idea 
of this last crowning feature of heaven's bliss? 
Shall I bid you behold the fathomless ocean, and 
measure the briny drops that compose its im- 



'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" '229 

mensity, or number the wrinkled sands that pave 
its extended shores? Easier far would the com- 
putation be than that of the revolution of the 
eternal years. Shall I call to my assistance the 
science of numbers, and bid the mathematician 
have recourse to his highest powers of calcula- 
tion? Even so, let him be exclusively employed 
in the operation, and when he shall have com- 
pleted a cycle of digits sufficient to gird the 
countless worlds that illumine the cerulean fields 
of space, he will find that he has only bartered 
away irrevocable time in a useless and hopeless 
task. Yes, when years will have swelled into 
years, when ages will have rolled into myriads 
and myriads of ages, when the mind of the most 
brilliant genius will have exhausted itself in en- 
deavoring to measure the length of eternity by 
its own ideas of time, yea, when time itself shall 
have ceased, and worlds will have passed away, 
the uninterrupted joys of heaven will only just be 
beginning, to continue through the ages that are 
to last forever, and forever, and forever. 

Heaven, the finale of the "Old Themes,'' the 
one most prolific and beautiful in thought, is 
surely well v/orth all the studious contempla- 
tion and active preparation this life of ours can 



330 'Vld Thoughts on Old Themes" 

give it. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," 
and the fondest dream of youth, and the chas- 
tened wish of age, which neither honors nor 
cares can ever extinguish, is the hope of one day 
resting from the pursuits that now absorb us. 

In parting, then, with a theme upon which I 
fain would linger, let me draw upon a line of 
thought very significantly expressed in the con- 
cluding paragraph of the preface to the first edi- 
tion of that unctuous Httle book "The Happiness 
of Heaven," by Rev. F. J. Boudreaux, S. J., and 
in one of the final chapters, if memory serves 
me well, of Rev. Michael Mueller's admirable 
work "The Prodigal Son." 

Should the perusal of these pages cause some 
worshipper of mammon to pause in his down- 
ward career to think of "treasures which neither 
the moth nor the rust consume," should they in- 
cite those 

"Who yield up to pleasure their nights and their days. 
Forgetful of service, forgetful of praise," 

— Gerald Griffin^ 

to sigh after joys that pass not away ; should they 
inspire the poor, the down-trodden and the af- 
flicted to cast one longing, lingering glance 
toward the land "where sorrows are unknown," 



"Old Thoughts on Old Themes'' 231 

and all tears are wiped away ; should they induce 
the lonely pastor in his isolated country mission, 
the spouse of Christ in her quiet cloister home, 
God's servants all this wide world over to labor 
the more earnestly to behold, in higher degrees 
of glory ethereal, the face of the Father Eternal, 
then, indeed, shall I have written to good pur- 
pose. Be all this, however, as it may, with what 
sentiments soever the thoughtful reader may feel 
himself inspired, or to what generous resolves 
he may be drawn, by the perusal of these **01d 
Thoughts'' on this sublimest of the "Old 
Themes," for myself I have only to add that I 
have ever been resolved, and that I am yet firmly 
determined, to laboi; faithfully and well for the 
attainment of this only end for which we were 
created, the only purpose for which we exist, cost 
what it may* Though my eyes were to close 
forever to all that is bright and beautiful in na- 
ture's scenery; though I were to be shut out for- 
ever from the beaming smiles of those that are 
near and dear to me; still I will not complain; 
but, I must one day behold my Creator in the un- 
speakable rewards of the Beatific Vision; I must 
one day see Mary, the Immaculate Mother of 
God, in all her beauty and loveliness; I must 
gaze on the exquisite, the ecstatic joys of heaven. 



232 "Old Thoughts on Old Themes" 

Though my ears were to be hushed forever to 
all the sounds that are best fitted to please and 
deHght them ; though no words of sweet comfort, 
of fond affection, or of immortal hope were ever 
to greet m.e more, oh, no, I will*not repine; but, 
they must one day drink in the joyful refrains of 
eternity's rosy morn; they must one day reopen 
to the ravishing melodies of heaven. 

In fine, should racking pain or foul disease dis- 
tract my mind and lay my body low; should 
friends prove false, or fortune frown, or the fickle 
shaft of fate exile me to some far off, sea-girt 
isle, to end my days in misery and distress, yes, 
with God's assisting grace, I would bear it all 
without a murmur; but, I must one day set foot 
on that serene and fragrant shore "Where tem- 
pests never beat, nor billows roar." I must one 
day arrive at my true home in heaven where, in- 
dissolubly associated with father, mother, brother 
and sister, and in union with that "great multi- 
tude of all nations, and peoples, and tribes, and 
tongues," I ardently hope, all unworthy though I 
be, to be permitted to hymn my Maker's praise in 
that never-ending chant of the blessed: 

"Benediction, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, 
honor, and power, and strength, to our God for- 
ever and forever/' 



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